Kangaroo and Ka.iri. By J. K. Arthur. (Sampson Low and
Co.)—There is but little pretence of literary style or proportion in these notes and jottings on Australian life and its peculiar features. We are reminded of a certain school-geography where a paragraph of a few lines contains as many facts as words. But clumsily as the author arranges his facts, he nevertheless states them clearly, and the few sentences which describe for us the straits which sheep and cattle are reduced to in times of drought, are more impressive than pages of laboured prose. We hear but little of New Zealand and the Maori, and what little we do hear is quite inadequate to give any idea of the country or its fine aboriginal proprietors. Kangaroo and Kauri hardly tells us how much labour it has cost; for while, on the one hand, anybody who had been in Australia for six months could have written it, on the other hand it may represent the experience of a lifetime.
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