Book Reviezi's. 



119 



Of absorbing interest is the story of the growing boy wresting 

 from his hours of sleep the leisure to work out his inventions — his 

 ''early-rising machine," self-setting sawmill, thermometer, etc., which 

 were destined to open the door for the education he so longed for. 

 Equally absorbing are the chapters on the plant and animal life of that 

 Middle West wilderness, much of it vanished now as are the vast fields 

 of California wild flowers that Mr. Muir also saw in their full glory. 

 Of the passenger pigeons he says, "I have seen flocks streaming south 

 in the fall . . . like a mighty river in the sky, widening, contracting, 

 descending like falls and cataracts, and rising suddenly here and there 

 in huge ragged masses like high-plashing spray." 



The book is full of beauty and of the exultant joy of youth. "Oh 

 that glorious Wisconsin wilderness ! Everything new and pure in the 

 very prim.e of the spring when Nature's pulses were beating highest 

 and mysteriously keeping time with our own ! Young hearts, young 

 leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling 

 lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!" As we close its covers the 

 strongest impression that lives with us is of a boy's life, not darkened 

 by long days of toil, but brightened by an inner light that made visible 

 to him the glory and the wonder of the world. Like the little black 

 water-bugs whose playing in the meadow springs he loved to watch, 

 Mr. Muir's heart all his life seems to have been "dancing to a music" 

 most of us never hear. M. R. P. 



"Our Vanishing During the past year more laws have been enacted 

 Wild Life." for the preservation of our American bird life 



than at any time in the country's history. To 

 achieve this no single influence threw as much weight into the scale as 

 Director Wilham T. Hornaday's "Our Vanishing Wild Life." * Its 

 burning and indignant pages remind one of the zeal of the old anti- 

 slavery days when the force of great moral convictions won the day 

 against greed and wrong. The book is profusely and beautifully 

 illustrated, and packed with a starthng array of facts from cover to 

 cover. An idea of its importance may be gathered from the fact that 

 the New York Zoological Society has expended nearly ten thousand 

 dollars in printing and distributing copies of the book to every law- 

 maker in the United States, every governor, every State game commis- 

 sioner and State game Warden, and about five hundred newspapers. 

 During the recent successful campaign of the California Associated 

 Societies for the enactment of better protective laws in California a 

 copy of the book was sent to every member of the Assembly and of the 

 Senate. Mr. Hornaday makes it clear that wild Hfe has its ethical as 

 well as its sentimental and practical aspects. When one considers that 

 within the memory of man twenty-three species of North American 

 birds have practically been exterminated and that each year two and 

 one-half milHon grm-men are shooting the life out of the dwindling 



* Our Vanishing Wild Life. By William T. Hornaday. Charles Scribner's 

 Sons, New York. Price $2.00. 



