SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
Snap Shots Books, Art, Drama By George Middleton SPIDERS and elephants! The phrase sounds like the beginning of a Lewis Carrol jingle. But it isn't. It is merely suggested by two new and...
...Altogether, this book is one which no lover of poetry, any less than the student of literature, can afford to overlook...
...and how everything is being pinned to paper...
...It is almost uncanny the way in which he succeeds in even giving personality to the tiny insects he tells about...
...The author brings together facts like the true scientist he is but he writes like a poet...
...Riley enthusiasts will delight in the several special poems he has contributed to this volume, beginning with a characteristic Foreword in the sonnet form and continuing through a series of felicitous metrical interchanges by these comrades of Parnassus, between whom there existed a friendship unique, in the annals of literary association...
...How interesting every thing in the world is...
...The main divisions of the book treat first of the micro-organisms themselves, seeond, fermentations, particularly those affecting foods, and third, the relations of bacteria and other micro-organisms to health...
...Sutherland is not a poet or seer but he is an accurate observer...
...But most of the time he has been after the world's greatest game—the elephant...
...The battles, the wooings, and the deaths of these little animals are full of comedy and tragedy...
...After reading this book one cannot idly brush aside the next spider one meets: one feels as though an acquaintance should be scraped some-somehow and a plea offered for it to perform its nest building—that we may cease our admiration of the works of man...
...But the story he has to tell, simple as it is in narrative style, will be a classic in this sort of subject, for he has added much to our knowledge of the pachyderm...
...Here, truly, is a new note, a "distinctive method, with-out the usual unhappy concomitant of a daring disregard for the reasonable restrictions of art's authority...
...I leave that discussion to the humane societies...
...It is elaborately illustrated with more than three hundred and fifty illustrations, both line and half tone, in the text...
...Literary Notes A BOOK designed to give the general reader who is interested in trusts a fair knowledge at first hand of the historical development of the trust movement in the .United States and a thorough comprehension of the problems emanating from the trusts that the country is to-day facing is William S. Stevens's Industrial Combinations and Trusts...
...I liked both...
...In his modest introduction he tells something of the wanderlust which has made him love the great stretches underneath the stars, and how he has been in turn, "nigger bosser," railroad builder, native store keeper and prize fighter...
...it is exceptionally well written, the different topics being treated consistently and with a good sense of proportion...
...One of the most exciting of these is his fight with four elephants at one time...
...Elephants and spiders...
...Though concise in statement it is thorough in method and scope...
...He writes exactly what he sees and as the life he has led for sixteen years on the pori of Africa has been one long series of adventure, the result is a book full of excitement that keeps the breath taut while seated in the comfortable chair by the student lamp...
...To achieve his purpose the editor has made a selection of original documents which present the actual conditions impartially...
...Certainly, Mr...
...In view of this pronouncement, a peculiar interest attaches to The Lute of Life (Horton & Co., Cincinnati...
...IT WAS James Whitcomb Riley who "dis-covered" the late James Newton Matthews, and it was no less, an authority than the famous Hoosier bard who first proclaimed him as among the foremost of America's authentic poets...
...The Patent Monopoly, The Absorption of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, Methods of Competition and Restraint of Trade, Recent Trust Decisions, Methods of Dissolution, Efficacy of Dissolution and The Views of Eminent Business and Professional Men as to the Proper Methods of Handling Different Gigantic Problems are all presented through source material * * * A BOOK well adapted not only for the use of students of household science but also for those who wish to study the science of bacteriology from an economic and sanitary rather than from a strictly medical point of view is Household Bacteriology (Maemillan), by Robert E. Buchanan, Professor of Bacteriology in the Iowa State College, and Estelle D. Buchanan...
...Here we see the skill of man matched against the instinct of the animal—only the man had a gun...
...Sutherland has told his story well and that is what concerns us...
...But the human being must have his excitement and perhaps all we think of is the thrill it gives us to read of it...
...I leave it to the readers of these two volumes...
...Nearly always he hunted alone, without a large expedition...
...Monsieur Fabre was, as every knows, one of the world's greatest naturalists and in this book—the third, I believe, to be translated—the editor has gathered together many of his remarkable studies of spiders...
...One might wax sentimental over the death of the animals thus encountered—for they were sought out in their own native place by a stranger from beyond the seas...
...The work embodies the results of the most recent researches...
...for we do not know which is the more stimulating: to follow the spiders with J. H. Fabre (The Life of the Spider: Dodd, Mead & Co...
...It all depends on one's taste...
...His walks in the fields furrowing for the facts of his specialty, his cages, and glass jars in which the captives are watched and their actions recorded arc handled with a consummate skill...
...Which is the more interesting...
...It is thus a peculiarly intimate account which he presents, not sequentially like a diary but rather as individual experiences brought together out of a large mass of episodes...
...Every intricacy of their life is narrated with a biographer's love of detail and over it all hovers the sense of mystery which rests inherent in any life form...
...and it should have a place in the library of every cultured person...
...One gets a personal interest in their marvelous intelligence and mechanically ingenious habits...
...It is merely suggested by two new and fascinating books which are lying before me...
...Specimens of Early Pooling, Representative Trusts, Legislative Opposition to the Trust, Judicial Attack on the Trust, The Holding Company, Formation of the United States Steel Corporation, Factor's Agreements, International Agreements, Pools and Associations...
...Here are two opportunities offered for exciting adventures...
...The work is edited by Walter Hurt, whose brilliant pen furnishes an "Appreciation" of the dead poet that is a masterpiece of its kind...
...In a thoroughly scientific manner the authors treat the subject matter of general as well as household bacteriology including therefore, the true bacteria as well as the yeasts, molds and protozoa...
...Price $1.50, postpaid), a collection of Matthews' writings just issued, and in which we find the Riley verdict amply vindicated...
...It is not the place to comment upon the humanity which is involved in his record kill of over 447 bull elephants...
...or to track the spoor of the elephant with James Sutherland (The Adventures of an Ele-phant Hunter: Maemillan...
Vol. 5 • February 1913 • No. 7
