24 SEPTEMBER 1921, Page 23

The Wanderings of a Spiritualist. By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

(Hodder and Stoughton. 12s. 6d. net.)—This account of a lecturing tour in Australia and New Zealand is a compound of notes of travel—always candid and often amusing—and of discussions of spiritualistic phenomena. The author is tre- mendously in earnest, and seems to have found numerous sympathizers wherever he went. On one page we find a generous and well-deserved tribute to the late Frank Bullen. " How is it that sailors write such perfect English ? There are Bullen and Conrad—both of whom served before the mast—the two purest stylists of their generation. So was Loti in France. There are some essays of Batten's, especially a description of a calm in the tropics, and again of ' Sunrise seen from the Crow's Nest,' which have not been matched in our time for perfection of imagery and diction." Bullen, he adds, " was the best singer of a chanty that I have ever heard."