12 



"The Three Young Crusoes" is all about three children 

 wrecked on a fabulous West India island, what they saw there 

 and what they learned by the experience. 



In Billy the Boy Naturalist, reviewed in an earlier number of 

 ToRREYA, the author's gift for seeing things from the boy's 

 point of view was noted as one of the merits of the book. In 

 the last three volumes this gift is somewhat obscured by a mass 

 of quotations, maxims, and epigrams, selected and composed 

 with a catholicity of taste that would stun the average boy. 

 Epigrams and maxims too, however piquant to grown-ups may 

 not be always virginibtis puerisque. 



Writing books like these, even for children, involves an aston- 

 ishing willingness for self-revelation on the author's part, for it 

 sweeps away some of the reticences of our Anglo-Saxon tradi- 

 tion. While most of us may have passed through the phases 

 of youth upon which the author dwells with such particularity, 

 few have the courage to disclose them. To alter slightly a 

 phrase of Stevenson, who in rare degree understood writing for 

 children, some of us might think that while we are quite capable 

 of writing books like these we prefer not to write them. But 

 the preferences of adults with Anglo-Saxon reticences, who may 

 object to the books, is not likely to weigh much against them so 

 far as children are concerned. And for young people there is in 

 them an undeniable fund of information on natural history. 



The Editor. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE CLUB 

 October 29, 1919 



The meeting was held in the Morphological Laboratory of the 

 New York Botanical Garden at 3:30 p.m., Vice-President Barn- 

 hart presiding. There were twenty-eight persons present. 



The minutes of the meeting held October 14 were read and 

 approved. Dr. Isaac Levin, Mr. Arthur H. Thomas, were 

 nominated for membership. 



Dr. Britton spoke of the completion of the new greenhouse 

 presented to the New York Botanical Garden by Messrs. Daniel 



