t
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.

* * * * *

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;" and you,
if you are like me, hide a yawn and say, "No, really?" There is a
breezy carelessness, too, about his methods which kills a story. He
distinctly states, for instance, that the story of the "Headless Cat
of No. ----, Lower Seedley Street, Manchester," was told to him by a
Mr. ROBERT DANE. In the first half of the narrative this gentleman's
brother-in-law addresses him as _Jack_, and later on his wife says to
him, "Oh, _Edward_." What a man whose own Christian name is so much a
matter of opinion has to say about seeing headless cats does not seem
to me to be evidence.

* * * * *

There seems to be an increasing public for the volume of reflections.
At all events Mr. REGINALD LUCAS, who has already two or three
successes in this kind