264 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:5— May, 1915 



tion agent. To scatter seeds and roots of wild flowers in congenial 

 situations in the same spirit as one would scatter seeds of kindness 

 is good nature-study doctrine. Emerson called him Friend who 

 "loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk" but Trevena goes 

 further, for he finds it knightly service to seek and befriend the 

 timid blossoms that are maintaining a losing struggle for their 

 existence. It certainly is a form of sport that incurs neither death 

 or pang or pain, to its subjects nor regret to its pursuer. 



The Backwoodsman, Charles G. D. Roberts. 269 pp. Macmillan 

 Co. 50c. 

 This is a collection of fifteen of Roberts' stories. The book is 

 one of Macmillan's juvenile library so that many of the stories 

 are those that would appeal to the boy. They are tales of adven- 

 ture and heroism, several of them with a vein of fine sentiment. 

 "The Gentling of Red McWha" is the story of a lumberman 

 beneath whose rough exterior was a kindly man. The hero in him 

 comes out in the rescue of a little girl who had been adopted by the 

 camp. ' ' The Grip in the Deep Hole' ' is a story of the unintentional 

 rescue by a bear of the woodsman Barnes from a dangerous pool 

 in which he has been caught. "Mrs. Gammit and the Porcu- 

 pines" has a delicious bit of humor in it. Mrs. Gammit persists in 

 the belief that the porcupines are robbing her chicken coop. She 

 will not believe that it is the weasels, "those skinny little rats ain't 

 wuth noticin'". These stories are hardly on a par with Roberts' 

 best, and yet they are well worth reading. Any boy who has a 

 fondness for the woods will enjoy them and they will help him not 

 only to an appreciation of some of nature's secrets, but to a better 

 understanding of some elements of the heroic. 



Wanted 



To complete volumes for binding, we wish to buy one copy each 

 of the Nature-Study Review for October, 19 13, September and 

 October, 1914. Will pay 15 cents a copy. Mail flat to The 

 Nature-Study Review, Ithaca, New York. 



