N.Z. MEMOIRS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

N.Z. MEMOIRS.

ROOTS OF CIVILISATION.

A GREAT PACIFIC INDUSTRY. On page one "Cyrano" reviews "America, a Practical Handbook," by Ronald Elwy Mitchell. It is a book for the British. There has also been published "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage," by H. W. Horwill, who deals with about 4000 common terms that differ in meaning in English and American. v An American critic has discovered a kinship between Katherino Mansfield and Josephine Johnson, a young American who has published a book of tales, "Winter Orchard." The kinship "does not lie in effect but in cause, not in the achieved work but in the special set of sharp and delicate instruments both possess. They are equipped with a kind of extra antennae of perception. Their senses miss nothing that human senses are capable of receiving and never tire or go stale or register a blurred impression."

Tho London "Observer" notes that there seems to be no decrease- in tho birth rate among tho 'ologies. A week's papers make mention, in one connection or another, of neurology, speleology, mycology, pedology, etymology, and Egyptology, and as specialism increases She re is no reason why tho ecienco of terminology should not continuo to

flourish. It- isi true that the titles are confusing; and many laymen have not yet quite grasped the distinction between scatology and eschatology.

Writing in the "National Review," on recent changes in book publication and reviewing, Orlo Williams notes that, whereas formerly a reviewer could shut himself up in his study for a month to pen a serious critique of a single work— a critique which might not be published for another month or more—he must now often bo prepared to cope in a day or two with a pile of volumes so that his article may lie ready to come out on tho day of their issue. For the lives of books havo shortened with the increase in their numbers. If a book, on its day of publication, does not impinge with considerable violence on the public eye, it has irremediably lost its start in a brief existence.