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Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21156, 1 October 1938, Page 12

A handbook which should prove of considerable benefit to farmers, fruitgrowers, market gardeners, and all agricultural students is “Commercial Fertilisers,” by J. A. Bruce. A.N.Z.1.C., formerly inspector of fertilisers for the New Zealand Department of Agriculture. An agricultural chemist who has made a life study of the soil and fertilisers in their relation to plant life, Mr Bruce presents the reader with both a general and specific guide in all matters relating to the subject of soil improvement, its chemical combinations, properties, and physical characteristics. A valuable section of the publication deals with the great variations in soil types and environmental conditions to which plant life is subjected. Plant feeding is an extremely complicated subject, but the author describes and classifies the fertilisers and shows their value as nutrients for plants. The publication is profusely illustrated with charts and photographs, while its written contents are clearly “chapterised” so that no diffficulty is experienced in referring to the particular subject desired. The ordinary layman with a flair for a back garden could study with profit and interest the pages of Mr Bruce’s book.

In “Tire Magic Box" we are told of a sort of mechanical Puck of Pook's Hill, in that it could make the past live again. It’s inventor believed that nothing that had happened was lost, but remained in the atmosphere and could be reproduced, rather like a wireless broadcast, if the right instrument were used. He lent his invention to a family of children who were unable to go for their usual holiday at the seaside, and the results more than compensated for their disappointment. They went to St. James’ Park, in London, turned the handle of the box, and found themselves talking to King Charles 11., and then they mingled with the crowd that was making Citywards to watch the Great Fire. They went to St. James’ Palace and joined in the famous game of hide-and-seek with the children of Charles I. when the Duke of York escaped from the Roundheads. They were present at the traditional plucking of red and white roses by the parties of York and Lancaster, and, rather anachronistical!)’, heard Richard Plantagenet quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI. They saw the coronations of King Harold and William the Conqueror, and met Dick Whittington on Hampstead Heath as London’s bells pealed "Turn again.” In the Tower they talked with Lady Jane Grey and with Lady Nithsdale when she rescued her husband; at Hampton Court they met Catharine Howard before and after her marriage; and they saw the Danes invade England. The various events are simply and vividly described.

In “Everyman to His Wife.” Mr Cosmo Hamilton expresses dissatisfaction with the modern fashionable wife, and by means of a series of intimate letters brings home to "Everywife" the possible effects of her change of personality. The letters are written while on a solitary holiday, by a mere husband, a man at the extreme end of his tether as husband, to his ultra-fash-ionable wife. The letter-writer is a barrister, and he endeavours to examine his own case impartially in the hope that it might clear the way to a better understanding between himself and his wife. He sets out with the utmost sincerity to make an honest statement of a husband and wife relationship that has gone desperately astray. This couple were once young and very much in love. They risked a certain lack of material wealth and married to experience a few years of complete happiness. But their bliss was short-lived. The husband became a successful barrister and his wife as easily turned into a successful hostess and a woman of fashion. The husband's contention is that he married a fresh and natural country girl and his wife turned into a woman with a shining head of brass, plucked eyebrows, pink nails and sticky red lips. She conforms to all the ultrasmart modes of the moment from modern art to “boy friends.” Her husband remains outside this modernity, but resents it bitterly. Such relationships are a commonplace, implies the author, and he passes this book with its challenge into the hands of “Every-wlfe," hoping for controversy. His challenge, however, is not likely to be taken up by the colonial wife. Amusing, immediate and thought-provoking, she will certainly find it; but in his desire to drive home his argument the author has overstated his case and made it, for the feminine reader, particular rather than general.