NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
■235 
Mo 7 -e About Wild Nature, by Mrs. Brightwen. Portrait of the Author and 
twenty full-page illustrations. Small crown bvo., pp. xvi., 261, 3s. 6d. (T. Fisher 
Unwin.) This volume certainly needs no commendation to the readers of Nature 
Notes. It is a worthy companion to its predecessor, and we cannot recommend 
it more strongly than by saying this, although we hope to notice it at length in an 
early issue. 
Several other books also remain unnoticed. 
SELBORNIANA. 
The Master of the Buckhounds. — We trust that the Editor of Truth 
has good authority for his statement that the office of Master of the Buckhounds 
is not to be kept up after the present year. 
We have learnt, with some surprise, that a valued correspondent has taken 
exception to the observations which we have felt it our duty to moke upon the 
subject, apparently mainly because by so doing we are trenching upon the domain 
of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We believe, 
however, that we are acting in the best interests of the Society by joining hands 
whenever possible with those whose objects are similar to our own ; and moreover 
we do not see how this is to be avoided, even were it desirable. Our Natural 
History notes, for example, cover ground already occupied by many magazines ; 
the advocacy of Open .Spaces is taken up by more than one body ; the Preserva- 
tion of Footpaths engages the attention of a special society ; reviews of books are 
published by almost every newspaper ; and so we might continue. If, indeed, we 
are to restrict ourselves solely to matters which are not taken up in any other 
quarter we shall be relieved of the growing difficulty of finding space for the 
interesting matter that is sent to us, but we shall at the same lime lose the greater 
part of our subscribers, whose varied interests are, we believe, best considered 
by our present course of action. 
A Protest. — I write to enlist your aid in protesting against the nuisance 
and, to me, the sacrilege, of defacing our English landscape with huge and un- 
sightly advertisement boardings. On my recent holiday journey to and from 
Devonshire, whenever I looked out of the window to enjoy, as I am in the habit of 
doing, occasional peeps of what characteristic rural scenery is still left us, my eye 
was continually offended by ghastly announcements on staring canvases of some 
quack’s pills and somebody else’s cosmetics. For many miles out of London these 
eyesores recur in almost every alternate field, and the traveller cannot look out to 
delight in the windings of the silver river or the picture of the distant village 
church nestling among its trees without seeing these hideous developments of 
modern trade competition everywhere in the foreground. This at last became 
so painful that I ceased to look out, and turned from nature, defaced and defiled, to 
my book. 
The pleasures of railway travel are few enough, and it seems monstrous that 
this one alleviation of the tedium of a long journey should be vitiated and nullified 
by commercial greed. I suppose nothing can be done. This is a free country, 
and we must accept the penalties along with the privileges of our freedom. Aly 
only hope is that agrowing sentiment of pride in our national scenery, and jealousy 
for its preservation, such as your Society and its Magazine strive to foster, dif- 
fused among our farmers and landowners, may tend to check this unspeakable 
nuisance. 
All Selbornians will, I feel sure, use their influence to create a public opinion 
which shall denounce this wholesale and brutal defacement of our fair English 
landscape as a blasphemy and a crime, and give practical expression to their 
indignation by refraining themselves and dissuading their friends from using 
articles thus advertised. The evil is increasing. In some of the loveliest parts of 
Devonshire I found every five-barred gate and every stile to a field-path bepasted 
with tailoring and other advertisements. The yokels who do this kind of thing 
