5 NOVEMBER 1892, Page 11

Mr. Batter's Pedigree. By Horace G. Hutchinson. "The White- friars

Library of Wit and Humour." (Henry and Co.)—Some very happy descriptions of Mexican, and particularly Californian, life are to be found in Mr. Batter's Pedigree, as good, indeed, as wo can well expect from an Englishman. One or two other stories there are of New Orleans and Virginia—the " Coon Hunt" being capital, with its local colouring of the Virginian habits—and one and all have that quiet but thorough appreciation of humour which goes so far towards bringing the picturesque side of Western life before the European reader. Mr. Batter's Pedigree is a dis- tinctly readable and literary description of some phases of life in the South-Western States.