BOOK REVIEWS 85 



material that deals with the animals and plants and processes 

 of the farm and country, literary standards have been sacrificed. 

 If the books are used merely as supplementary readers in addition 

 to, but not in place of, the standard literary readers, they undoubt- 

 edly will serve a very excellent purpose, but it would seem a shame 

 to have ai tides on plant diseases, testing seed corn, the care of 

 milk, plant improvement, and the home vegetable garden, take 

 the place of David Copperfield, Hans Brinker, John Ridd and other 

 heroes dear to the boy's heart. 



The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat. Thornton W. Burgess. 



1 20 pp. Little, Brown & Co. 50c. 



This is an interesting little story of Jerry and his companions 

 of the ponds and streams. To the adult mind, especially if it has a 

 scientific bent, the conversation of muskrats, turtles, and frogs 

 who are dressed in evening clothes and silk hats, seems decidedly 

 incongruous, but the boys and girls of six to eleven for whom this 

 book is intended undoudtedly enjoy the element of personality 

 in the tales of animals. 



The author seems to have the happy faculty of keeping his story 

 in a natural setting and teaching not a little of the habits of the 

 animals along with the story that he is telling. The boy and girl 

 who is interested in the out-of-doors will enjoy the book and it will 

 likely stimulate their observation as well as prove an interesting 

 bit of reading. 



A Manual of Weeds. Ada E. Georgia. Pp. xi + 593. The 



Macmillan Co. $2.00. 



This is one of the rural manuals edited by L. H. Bailey, which 

 is a guarantee of the quality of the book. In the fall of the year, 

 when school begins, especially in the city, the bulk of the available 

 plants for plant-study are weeds. Vacant lots and neglected 

 comers afford to the nature-study teacher abundant material, 

 but it has been difficult heretofore to identify much of this material 

 unless the teacher was a botanist and could identify with the Gray's 

 Manual. In the present book the pictures are given of all of the 

 common weeds, so that even one who knows little botany ma\' 

 identify with fair ease. There is then given a description of each 

 weed with information regarding its time of blooming, its range, 

 and the means of control, besides interesting points regarding its 



