The Green Bough. By E. Temple Thurston. (Cassell. 8s. 6d.
net.)—A remarkable book entirely concerned with the passion of maternity. The heroine, Mary Throgmorton, insists on bearing a child to the hero who is a married man. As she disapproves of the holding of property, she proposes to bring up her baby, who is a boy, as a farmer's lad. The father, whose marriage is childless, and whose wife accepts the situation, persuades Mary to allow him to adopt the child and give him a public school and university education. The mother's consent to this arrangement strikes a false note. She is not a weak woman, and with her views it seems almost impossible that she should give way to her former lover. The book is powerfully written, and the author succeeds in giving a monumental touch both physically and mentally to the figure of Mary.
The Man Who Did the Right Thing. By Sir Harry Johnston. (Chatto and Windus. 8s. 6d. net.)—The interest of Sir Harry Johnston's new volume does not lie in the story. In fact, it must be confessed that whenever the scene changes to England the book becomes much lees worthy of notice. The novel begins in the year 1886, and deals with the fortunes of a girl who goes out to marry a missionary in East Africa. Sir Harry Johnston gives a terrible account of the journey which the unfortunate bride has to take on her way to the mission-house ; and many of the other scenes in the book give a most illuminating insight into the East African oonditions of those days. The book, which is a long one, ends after the Armistice, when the hero (who, by the way, is not the missionary) establishes himself in East Africa rather than return to the England of the recon- struction. The pictures of travel and the descriptions of scenery In. Rough Orosting. By Sylvia Thompson. Oxford: Blackwell. ad Rough
and of the big game of East Africa are most picturesquely and vividly given, especially the account of the charm of the Happy Valley where " Herds of gnus, hartebeests, elands, and zebras, intermingled with reed buck and impala, alternately stared in immobility, then dashed off in clouds of yellow dust, and once more stood at gaze. Gazelles with glossy black, annulated horns and bodies brilliant in colour—golden-red, black-banded, and snowy white below—cropped the turf a few yards from the faintly marked track which the caravan was following." We have seldom read a more attractive description of wild nature.
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