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Mr. SETON GORDON is a bold man.  It is one thing to call a book The Charm of the Hills (CASSELL) and quite another to succeed in conveying that charm through the medium of the printed word.  Perhaps, however, he was encouraged by the success that has already attended these pen-pictures of Highland scenes in serial form; certainly he knew also that he had another source of strength in a collection of the most fascinating photographs of mountain scenery and wild life, nearly a hundred of which are reproduced in the present volume.  So that what Mr. GORDON the writer fails to convey about his favourite haunts (which is not much) Mr. GORDON the photographer is ready to supply.  The papers, which range in subject from ptarmigan to cairngorms, are written with an engaging simplicity and directness, and show a sympathetic knowledge of wild nature such as is the reward only of long familiarity.  The glorious mountain wind blows through them all, so that as you read you feel the heather brushing your knees, and see the clouds massing on the peaks of Ben-something-or-other.  Perhaps Mr. GORDON is at his most interesting on the subject of the Golden Eagle.  There are many striking snapshots of the king of birds in his royal home; and some stories of court life in an eyrie that are fresh and enthralling.  One thing that I was specially glad to learn on so good authority is that the Golden Eagle, so far from being threatened with extinction, is actually increasing in the deer forests of the North.  This is intelligence as welcome as it is nowadays unusual.  The book, which is published at 10s. 6d. net, is dedicated “to one who loves the glens and corries of the hills”; and all who answer to this description should be grateful to the writer for his delightful record.

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Goodness knows that of all London’s teeming millions I am the possessor of the most easily curdled blood, but my flesh declined to creep an inch from the first page to the last of Animal Ghosts (RIDER).  I think it was Mr. ELLIOTT O’DONNELL’s way of telling his stories that was responsible for my indifference.  He is so incorrigibly reticent.  His idea of a well-told ghost story runs on these lines:—­“In the year 189—­, in the picturesque village of C——­, hard by the manufacturing town of L——­, there lived a wealthy gentleman named T——­ with his cousin F——­ and two friends M——­ and R——.”  I simply refuse to take any interest in the spectres of initials, still less in the spectres of the domestic pets of initials.  I am no bigot; by all means deny your ghost his prerogative of clanking chains and rattling bones; but there are certain points on which I do take a firm stand, and this matter of initials is one of them.  Not one of these stories is convincing.  Mr. O’DONNELL taps you on the chest and whispers hoarsely, “As I stood there my blood congealed, I could scarcely breathe.  My scalp bristled;”