FROM ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 
35 
FROM ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 
We have several home-made books awaiting our notice, but on the present 
occasion we propose to talk about some friends who have come to us from across 
the Atlantic, and who deserve a hearty weleome in the old country. 
In Nature Notes for 1893 (p. 69) we published a charming article entitled 
“ Sport without a Gun,” which a friend had shown us in the Photographic News. 
“ This suggestive and thoroughly Selbornian article,” we said, “ is quoted from Oar 
Animal Friends, an American book of which we should like to know mote.” 
We asked whether any transatlantic reader would send us a copy. Not long 
after came a friendly letter from Mr. John P. Haines, the President of the American 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, saying that the work in question 
was the monthly organ of his Society, and that he was sending us a copy ; but it 
never came. Last autumn we reminded Mr. Haines of his kind promise, and 
promptly there came to us a parcel of numbers from July, 1893, since which time 
we have so far regularly received this admirable periodical. 
It costs a dollar a year, or ten cents a month, and is thus a good deal 
dearer than our own Animal IVoild. At the risk of appearing conceited, we may 
say that the style of its contents strikes us as a judicious blend of the Animal 
World and Nature Notes — the practical teaching of the former combined with the 
natural history observations of the latter. Put we must add that our American 
cousins seem to have avoided the extremes of the Animal World, on which we 
have sometimes had occasion to comment ; while the fact that the birds and 
beasts talked about are unfamiliar to us gives a freshness to the observations 
about them which we cannot claim for our own records, though we may hope that 
our transatlantic friends pay us a similar compliment. 
We do not know whether Our Animal Friends is known to Selbornians in 
England,or whether our own ignoiance was exceptional ; but if not known, it certainly 
should be. There are many to whom the annual subscription would be no obstacle, 
and those who have to do with Bands of Mercy, Selborne libraries, and the like, 
should not fail to secure such a tieasure-house of new matter. From a literary 
and artistic standpoint, apart from the interest of its subject. Our Animal Friends 
claims a high place ; and we regret, as we are so often obliged to do, the exigencies 
of space, which prevent us from quoting some evidence in support of our propo- 
sition. No better prize for Bands of Mercy and similar organisations could 
be found than the annual volumes, the contents of which would have the merit 
of being entirely fresh to the fortunate recipients. If we succeed in introducing 
this excellent journal to English Selbornians we shall have done a good work. 
We expect beautiful books from the “ Riverside I’ress ” (Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co., Cambridge, Mass.), and here are two — A Florida Sketch Book, by Bradford 
Torrey, whose name is as new to us as that of Mr. John Burroughs, the author of 
Kiverby, is familiar. Miss Fowler has from time to time published notes from 
Florida in our pages ; here we have a series of articles in the Jefferies-Burroughs 
vein, accompanied by an index moreover, which has hitherto been a desideratum 
in works of this kind. 
Mr. Torrey differs from the writer we have mentioned in that he makes 
friends more readily with the inhabitants of the places he visits. There is thus 
more human interest in his books than in those of similar authors. “ There 
came along a man in a cart, with a load of wood. We exchanged the time of 
day,” is a typical sentence ; and boat boys, negroes, horse men, and other varieties 
of the human race mingle not unpleasantly with birds and beasts, flowers and 
ferns. Among the best chapters is “ On the Upper St. John’s” — a record of his 
excursion with “a youthful boatman, expert alike with the oar and the gun,” who 
served him “ faithlully and well, impossible as it was for him to enter fully into 
the spirit of a man who wanted to look at birds, but not to kill them.” Mr. 
Torrey, a believer in “sport without a gun,” made his young friend a partial 
convert to that form of enjoyment. “ He had looked through the glass now and 
then, and of course had been astonished at its power. ‘ Why,’ he said, finally, 
‘ I never had any idea it could be so much fun just to look at birds in the way 
you do ! ’ I liked the turn of his phrase. It seemed to say, ‘ Yes, I begin to 
