Seeds of Pine. By Jitney Canuck. (Hodder and Stoughton. 6s.)—The
writer of Seeds of Pine has in abundance the gift of words and the joy of them. She can make a sentence as round and sweet as you please. " The roses are in full blast, and all the way along I walk the earth in a fine rapture. On the hilltop there is a spread of blue hyacinths, like a torn veil that has been thrown to the earth. Here, in bewildering array, grow wild parsnips, feverfew, painter's brush, mint- Bowers, and lilies that flame riotously across the sheens and greens of the open ways." She has, moreover, journeyed far afield in Western and Northern Canada, where few white women go, and has seen much, and has set down what she saw, in an intimate, personal way, curiously detached, as though for her own pleasure rather than for our edification. Indeed, her book would be altogether charming were it not disfigured by the use of archaistic phrases and by a madden- ing form of self-consciousness which finds its expression in an affected simplicity.
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