This Week's Books
SUPERLATIVES should not be in the stock-in-trade of the re- viewer, but they too often are. However, although enthusiasm for the good books sent to us must be tempered with discretion, sometimes a little volume arrives of which one cannot say too much. Gathered Together, by Helen and Philip Gosse (Swan Press, 7s. 6d.) is a book of this kind. It is a collection of nouns of multitude, such as a sounder of boar (Dame Juliana Berners gave " boars," being a prioress and not a huntswoman), a skulk of foxes, a drove of kine. More curious are a pontificalite of prelates, a leap of leopards (the word is misprinted—the only error in a beautiful pro- duction), an epicucion of officers, a pride of peacocks. Some of the words in this " Contesseration " are almost unbelievable but very jolly—a superfluity of nuns, for instance, and a skulk of friars. May all who read these few pages enjoy them as we did.
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