WONDERS OF THE EARTH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 9, 11 January 1941, Page 15

WONDERS OF THE EARTH

"This Amazing Planet" is a collection of eighty short papers by Roy Chapman Andrews ori the wonders of this globe. These little gems of marvel and oddity cover a wide iield. One of them goes back to the day when the present distinguished director of the American Museum of Natural History, an enthusiastic boy. just out of college^ met the famous-African explorer, Sir Harry Johnston, and heard him talk about his thrilling discovery oftheokapL; Another tells how Dr. Andrews had some experience with the activity of the "man-trap clam" in the coral reefs off the coast of Celebes in the Dutch East Indies—but this giant clam, the scientist adds, is by no means the "man-eater" that it is popularly supposed to be.

The author's information is as varied as his range of experience is wide. One learns why the lion is not an Asiatic beast, about singing mice, seals, penguins, and real vampires and real mermaids, who, by the way/ are absolutely without charm.

The animal kingdom is not the only one, however, which furnishes amazr ing facts for Dr. Andrews's files. He writes, too, of hail storms and vol' canoes and underground streams, of gems and meteors and fossils. : And the consideration of the last-named subject leads to toothed birds and titanotheres. The final marvel, in the book is. prehistoric man• himself. But Dr. Andrews leaves us with a look-at^ the future