NEWS AND NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14566, 31 December 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWS AND NOTES.

Sir W. Robertson* N icoi.l, speaking at the Authors Club recently, eaid that Robert Louis Stevenson received only £100 for " Treasure Island," now eagerly road by every generation of boys.

Lord Roseberv's book on Lord Chatham runs to over 400 pages, and is in every sense a full work. Ilis lordship's interest in Chatham no doubt sprang originally from the f icL that on this mother's side he is, himself, a Stanhope.

The Lady Mayoress, Ladv Knill, intends to write a book describing her experiences during her year of ottice. It cannot fail to be. interesting, and the proceeds of its sale will benefit the charities in which Lady Knill takes so great and personal an interest. Lady Knill is a grand-daughter of the famous architect Augustus JPugin. She has one son, Mr. John Stuart Knill, whose marriage with Miss Lucy Willis took place last June.

Few novels of recent years have been so often reissued as " The Sliulamile," which underwent the almost unique experience of being published afresh at 6s, after it had enjoyed a popular success at 6d. There will, therefore, be many who will hear with pleasure that the authors Alice and Claude Askewhave written a sequel, which is to be published early by Mr. Evcrleigh N;ush. The story is "culled " The Woman Deborah," and contains another of those characterstudies cf strong femininity for which Mr. and Mrs. Askew arc so thoroughly well known.

The two shilling new novel has now been fairly tried over a good long period. How has it done? Very well at the bookstalls, where it has revived in a better form the glories and success of the old-time " yel-low-back." Well, but not so well, in the bookshops alike of town and country. This is the answer which some inquiry on the matter brings forth. If that be the verdict, there is also a rider to it, namely, that the florin new novel seems to have come to stay, although the six-shilling novel will remain in possession as senior partner.

It does not deem to be ascertained how old a crocodile can be. In Arakan I had s«en tome Indian coins that had ceased to be current for about a century, and were then, in 1893, recovered from the stomach of a patriarchal crocodile. The likeliest guess was that he had got this trouble in his stomachfor such it pro bably was to him— eating one of the corpses that have furnished such plenteous feeding to his tribe in the wars in Arakan, more than a century before.— From "Big Cats and Other Beasts." By David Wilson : Methuen.