Book Reviews. 



147 



"The Mountain Trail This is the title of a little book by 

 AND Its Message."* the Reverend Albert W. Palmer. Its 



contents are of such excellent quality 

 that one cannot help wishing there were more pages in it. The 

 colored half-tone illustration of Gilmore Lake forms the frontis- 

 piece, and there are many others affording beautiful glimpses of 

 Hetch Hetchy, the Tuolumne Canon, Rogers Lake, and the 

 Tuolumne Meadows. Mr. Palmer has depicted in a very happy 

 manner the free and healthful life of the Sierra Nevada as it is 

 lived by members of the Sierra Club on their annual outings into 

 the High Sierra. Various types of interesting recreation seekers 

 pass before the reader amid a setting of cliffs and forests, lakes 

 and waterfalls, such as only the CaHfornia mountains can pro- 

 vide. The reader finds himself among them around the camp- 

 fire, where scientists tell the fascinating secrets of nature in 

 simple and direct language, where music and song are free from 

 the artifices of the theater, and where the day's fatigfue is slept 

 away on the blooming heath with no ceiling to shut out the stars. 

 John Muir also appears in these pages as only those know him 

 who have walked with him in the mountains. Yet amid this 

 recital of adventures and depiction of scenes, Mr. Palmer, with 

 gentle but sure touch, always turns to the light the moral aspect 

 of his experiences. W. F. B. 



"Wild Life This title is well selected, both as regards 



IN THE Rockies."* the birds, beasts and trees discussed, and also 

 as regards the writer's own adventures. As 

 "State Snow Observer" of Colorado, his winter travels are rec- 

 ords of what appear to the ordinary mountaineer to be extreme 

 discomforts and real dangers. His indifference to the former 

 and disregard of the latter are quite consistent with the supreme 

 dehght he feels in the beauty of the wild surroundings. 



To stay out night after night in the dead of winter without 

 blankets and without food other than raisins is certainly a 

 supreme test of a man's love for Nature in her wildest moods. 

 That the writer is amply repaid for such hardships is abundantly 

 evident in his every word. Instance his intimate matter-of-fact 

 recital of battles with storm and snow; also his loving chronicle 

 of "The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine," and again the adven- 

 tures of "Faithful Scotch." 



There is a quality of lovableness as well as of poetic beauty in 



*The Mountain Trail and Its Message. By Albert W. Palmer. Pil- 

 grim Press, Boston, 191 1. The book is attractively bound in corduroy 

 paper boards. 50 cents net. 31 pages. 



*Wild Life in the Rockies. By Ends A. Mills. Houghton-Mifflin Co., 

 Riverside Press, Boston and New York, 1909. 257 pages; with illustra- 

 tions from photographs. Price $1.75 net. 



