■||•■lature IFlotes: 
Ube Sclbome Society’s ^Il>aga5inc. 
No. 41. MAY, 1893. VoL. IV. 
THE ABUSE OF ADVERTISING. 
By the Editor. 
HERE can be no doubt of its existence, and it is grow- 
ing. Take up a magazine, and shake it, and you shall 
find the floor strewn with fly-leaves of all colours and 
shapes and sizes, each advertising “ ships, or shoes, 
or sealing wax,” or equally miscellaneous wares. It is worse 
when shaking produces no such effect, for then you shall dis- 
cover them sewn or otherwise fastened into the body of the book, 
and if you yield to your first hasty impulse, and tear them out, 
either you will damage your magazine, or horrible, ragged, 
jagged, untidy fragments will remain securely fixed. Atalanta 
does this, and it is bad enough, but the illustrated weekly papers 
go several better — or worse. We heard of some one the other 
day who gave up the Illustrated London News on this account, and 
ordered the Graphic ; but we did not hear what was said (and 
perhaps it is just as well) when it was discovered that this 
resulted in no improvement. Does any one bind these papers ? 
Probably not ; no one would perpetuate the advertisements which 
gradually are usurping the pages of the papers named, and are 
making their way into every imaginable corner of others. 
Perhaps this may be considered a matter outside the scope of 
the Selborne Society, but when the plague extends to the open 
fields it calls for a protest on our part. It is bad enough as we 
wind up the St. Gothard, or walk to Andermatt from Goschenen, 
to be reminded in gigantic letters, displayed on some suitable 
rock, of a certain kind of chocolate ; but this is not comparable in 
extent of nuisance to the almost continuous chain of advertise- 
ments which we noticed at Easter in the fields between London 
and Oxford. These hideous erections, usually of tin, with vile 
