Book Reviews. 



273 



appeal particularly to the dwellers of the San Francisco Bay 

 region. 



The present-day myths, which Dr. Merriam considers sep- 

 arately, are likewise full of poetry, especially the beliefs con- 

 cerning Ghosts. They tell how the Ghost remains in the body 

 four days after death and then, in invisible form, following the 

 path of the Wind, journeys westward across the ocean to the 

 Village of the Dead. Whirlwinds, they say, are dancing Ghosts. 

 Rainbows come to tell people a new soul is born. 



From the ethnologist's standpoint Dr. Merriam's book is in- 

 valuable, as many of the tales were told him by the last repre- 

 sentatives of villages now deserted, of tribes now extinct; but it 

 is seldom indeed that the lay reader finds such a treasure-house 

 of quaint, poetical conceptions opened before him. The stories 

 are presented to the imagination with a most sympathetic insight 

 into their beauty and significance, and with a charm and sim- 

 plicity and directness of style that is itself a reflection of an 

 earlier age, of simple natures living nearer the vanished radiance 

 of the world's morning. M. R. P. 



"Public Recreation Open air recreation and its vital influ- 

 Facilities."* ence on both physical and moral well- 



being, is beginning to occupy the atten- 

 tion of the public as it never has before. It is an encouraging 

 sign to note the gradual awakening to the economic and social, 

 as well as the aesthetic value of parks, whether they consist of 

 a few city squares reclaimed from the rent rolls and devoted to 

 the sports and pastimes of children who would otherwise be in 

 the hands of the police or the juvenile court; or of some great 

 work of nature, some glorious scenic region set apart from the 

 common fate of the wild country and saved from despoHation to 

 add to the total sum of health and happiness, above and beyond 

 the mere husbanding of material resources that has lately occupied 

 the national attention. A recent volume on "Public Recreation 

 Facilities" has been issued by the American Academy of Political 

 and Social Science, a Philadelphia society of some 5,000 mem- 

 bers, which publishes annually six volumes devoted to living 

 questions of the day. The present number consists of twenty- 

 eight articles grouped under the general heads of "Typical 

 Parks — National, State, County, and City," and "The Social Sig- 

 nificance of Parks and Playgrounds." Many of the papers 

 strongly advocate the preservation of our mountain scenery. 

 Speaking of the proposed Southern Appalachian Park reserve, 



* "Public Recreation Facilities." Vol. XXXV, No. 2, of The Annals of 

 the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, 191 0. 

 Price: cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00. 



