1 DECEMBER 1928, Page 31

More Books of the Week

(Continued from page 821.) -

Since nobody can write of dogs so well as -Mr. Patrick Chalmers and since nobody can paint them so well as Mr. Cecil Aldin, their joint book, A Dozen Dogs Or So " (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 15s.) will be as welcome to all dog-lovers as the thrust of g nose or the wag of a tail. It is impossible to say which is the best of these poems from Punch ; they are all excellent. The little girl's song about Spot is as exuberant as Mr. Aldin's pictures of that waggish little beast, and surely a litter of puppies was never better described than this :

" I heard the guggle and the tiny twitter

Of five fat atoms feeding as one whole, And stopped and picked you, mewling, from the litter A thing no bigger than a penny roll,

But still.pOSsessed of a discerning soul ! "

But whether Mr.. Chaliners is writing about the-" long lean dog " of the poacher, about a spaniel—" of sausage guild and sprawly gait," about a little hunt terrier, a " Labrador debutante," or a foxhound puppy; his poems are as delightfUl as the dogs themselves. The book deserves a great success.