Nature's Serial Story. By Edward P. Roe. (Sampson Low and
Co.)—Mr. Roe's undoubted passion for Nature assumes a different form from Mr. Burroughs's. He takes his readers to a country- house—of the American, not of the English type—and there lets them closely watch the march of the seasons in the midst of family joys and cares, while at the same time he initiates them into all the secrets of animal life. Nature-worship is tempered by sweethearting of a gentle turtle-dove sort, which of course ends happily. Mr. Roe has both enthusiasm and knowledge, and doubtless there are many who will appreciate his method of im- parting them. But, on the whole, we prefer Nature as Mr. Burroughs reproduces her, without popular lectures in the guise of conversations, and without Amy and Gertrude. There are, moreover, in Nature's Serial Story too many sentences like—" The flower-beds flamed with geraniums and salvias, and were gay with gladioli, while Amy and Mrs. Clifford exulted in the extent and variety of their finely quilled and rose-like asters and dahlias,"— which read like passages from a description of a provincial flower- show.
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