EDITOR'S CORNER. 



*53 



tions, the Society has been reluctantly 

 compelled to decline them. It is the inten- 

 tion of the Society, however, to be ready 

 to gather a good harvest of young wild 

 animals from the breeding season of 1899. 



EXPLOSION IN THE DUPONT 

 POWDER WORKS. 



One workman was killed, another seri- 

 ously injured and 3 buildings of the Du- 

 pont Powder Company's smokeless powder 

 plant, at Penn's - Grove, N. J., were de- 

 stroyed by an explosion May 28th. 



The Dupont plant has been rushed night 

 and day, on government orders, and owing 

 to attempts of supposed Spanish spies to 

 blow up the works a strong military guard 

 was placed over the property. 



There was a terrific explosion and one of 

 the mixing mills, a wood and corrugated 

 iron structure, about 300 feet square, was 

 seen to rise bodily in the air and then go 

 to pieces. It is supposed a pebble found its 

 way into the mixing trough, where the 

 highly explosive material was passing be- 

 tween rollers. 



The employes of the other mills rushed 

 for places of safety; but when flames started, 

 endangering the entire plant, 3 members of 

 the Dupont family rallied the workmen and 

 at the peril of their lives, fought the flames. 

 The fire from the wrecked structure had 

 spread to 2 other mills, and to avert a 

 frightful explosion it was necessary to re- 

 move 200 pounds of guncotton from a small 

 storehouse near one of the burning mills. 

 The Duponts. rushed through the fire and 

 smoke and carried this guncotton to a place 

 of safety. 



LEADING FEATURES OF SEPTEMBER RECRE- 

 ATION. 



" A Wild Cat Hunt," Dr. A. J. Wood- 

 cock, Illustrated by Ernest Seton Thomp- 

 son; " Our Venomous Snakes," Dr. M. G. 

 Ellzey; " Swan Shooting," Trios. G. Far- 

 rell; " Laurentides," Joseph W. Howe; 

 " Asleep on the Field of Fame," another 

 great war poem, by W. H. Nelson, etc. 



President McKinley has appointed Luth- 

 er S. Kelley, an old time scout and Indian 

 fighter^ as a captain in the 10th U. S. Vol- 

 unteer Infantry. Kelley served 5 years in 

 the ranks, on the frontier before he entered 

 General Miles' service as a scout, and will 

 give a good account of himself if he gets a 

 chance to burn powder. 



" Bird Neighbors " is one of the best 

 books on Ornithology published since the 

 days of Audubon. $2 gets a copy of that 

 book and a yearly subscription to Recrea- 

 tion. How can anybody afford to be with- 

 out that book, when it can be had at Vz 

 the publishers' price? 



BOOK NOTICES. 



ANOTHER FINE BIRD BOOK. 



The changes that are being rung on the 

 modern popular bird-book are many and 

 interesting. We now have bird-books ga- 

 lore, of all sizes, shapes, kinds and prices. 

 There are about a score of new ones — but 

 since 1857, no author or publisher has had 

 sufficient enterprise to bring out even one 

 general work on our mammals. The birds 

 of eastern North America have been writ- 

 ten up and written down, and now it seems 

 as if absolutely nothing remains but to re- 

 hash the same information in different 

 forms. We are almost ready to cry out to 

 our zoologists, " Give the birds a rest, brace 

 up, and give us at least one new book 

 about North American mammals." What 

 is the matter with our writers and publish- 

 ers that since 1854 no one has had the 

 courage to publish at least one popular 

 general work on our quadrupeds? How 

 unsatisfactory it is that the making of bird 

 books should be done so thoroughly and 

 so well and our mammals left absolutely 

 untouched, save in separate groups. 



These feelings of rage are by no means 

 directed at Mr. W. E. D. Scott, even 

 though he is indirectly the cause of them. 

 With people continually asking, " What is 

 the best modern work on the quadrupeds 

 of North America? " and " There is none," 

 the only answer to be made, the appearance 

 of another new bird-book fairly marks the 

 limit of human endurance. If " Bird 

 Studies " were less admirable, the abject 

 poverty of our book-shelves in certain 

 other directions would not be felt so 

 keenly. Take American reptiles, for ex- 

 ample. Aside from Holbrook's work, long 

 out of print, and now almost unobtainable 

 for money, there is no one work to which 

 .we may go for full information regarding 

 this important class of animals. 



All this, however, is quite by the way. 

 In " Bird Studies " both Mr. Scott and 

 Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons have done a 

 fine piece of work. It is what reviewers 

 are wont to call a "sumptuous" volume. 

 In size it is a small quarto (8 x 10 inches), 

 which affords room for plates that measure 

 5 J A x 7^2 inches. In it, the arts of pho- 

 tography and half-tone engraving, as ap- 

 plied to the illustrating of birds, have 

 reached high-water mark. Of the whole 

 166 illustrations, all are half-tones of the 

 highest class, and the whole of the book 

 is printed on heavy " plate paper " — a trifle 

 more costly to be sure, but always worth 

 the price. Fully one-half the illustrations 

 are of full-page size, and they possess great 

 interest, beauty and value. The greater 

 number of them are photographs of bird 

 groups that have been mounted by Mr. 

 Scott, and no higher compliment can be 

 paid to his artistic skill as a taxidermist 

 than by stating the simple fact that living 



