A Beautiful Backwoods Book

NO more luxurious piece of book making has been applied to the work of a Canadian writer in recent years than that which Doubleday, Page & Co. have given to the production of Arthur Heining’s “The Drama of the Forests” (Gundy, Toronto; $5.50), nor can it be said that Mr. Heming's work is not well worthy of its beautiful setting. The only really certain way of procuring illustrations which are absolutely in keeping with the reading matter is to have them provided by the man who did the reading matter. This involves, in many cases, a grave risk that the writer will prove defective as an illustrator or the artist will prove inefficient in prose. Mr. Heming began life as an illustrator, and rapidly rose to the leadership of his profession in he has now developed a direct, simple, and un-self-conscious style which is well suited to the adventures in the wilds that occupy most of his volume.

It is a large hook of 325 pages, with 13 full-page illustrations in colour, but it is a book which no lover of the wilds will willingly lay down. Mr. Heming knows his wild animals and his Indians and his habitants and trappers and game wardens as well as anybody now writing about them. Furthermore, he has a good sense of an anecdote and a neat and unostentatious way of telling it. Much of the volume has to do with methods of trapping, some of which are sufficiently start-New York, or at least that section of it which specializes in the representation of Wild Life. Much later in his career he began to write, and bring to the novice. The approved method of obtaining marten is to lure the animal into a hole in the snow, on the sides of which are boards into which four nails have been driven so that they project through the boards into the hole but at such an angle as to allow the animal to enter without trouble. When he attempts to get out they run into his flesh, and thus dissuade him from the effort. When the hunter arrives—the rear end of the marten now projecting from the hole—be places two fingers of each hand over the four nail points, seizes the animal’s tail with his teeth, and draws the victim out by throwing back his head. We are not surprised to read that “such work is rather risky, as the hunter may be bitten before he has a chance to kill the marten.”

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