ELEPHANT DANCE • By Frances Hubbard Flaherty
Filming wild elephants in the jungles of Mysore combines, the excitement of hunting and the nervous tension of stage-management. Robert Flaherty was sent to India to make a film based on Toomai of the Elephants, and in this book (Faber and Faber, 22s. 6d.) Mrs. Flaherty describes their adventures- in vivid and unselfconscious letters to her children and her friends: The flit fe* letters, describing their arrival in Mysore, contain nothing remarkable, but as soots as they reach . the jungle the _ letters become more and more interesting. Tlie. Indian people, seen through her eyes, are merely brown and' picturesque shadows, but she describes animals brilliantly. .The jungle_ is fill of the skipping monkeys, the graceful: harried creatures, the huge, silent elephants. The final drive of the herd of elephants into a stockade is intensely dramatic. Mrs. Flaherty communicates the:Stis- pense and anxiety of the long pretlaii- tion, the thrill of success', the 'mile& and misery' of -the driVen beasts. The photographs, of which there are plenty, are often beautiful—in this book,' one feels, the normal relationship of text and illustration is reversed: The many studies of elephants are very satisfying, and the human portraiture is equally good.
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