“The quality of the volume suggests that stronger work may follow. More experience should confirm that individual quality already described, and may help to put a curb on an exuberance of sentiment which is at present Miss Easton’s chief weakness.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p454 Jl 15 ’20 390w
EATON, WALTER PRICHARD. In Berkshire fields. il *$3.50 Harper 917.44
20–18686
Not as a scientist but merely as a lover of nature and the wilds, does the author record his wanderings through fields and woods. As a permanent resident in the hills he knows them in every season of the year and in every elemental mood and loves them “less for their softness than their wildness.” Their wildness, he tells us, is still considerable for in their miles of forest the moose and wildcat still roam and there is even recent evidence of a timberwolf. Seventy-eight illustrations, chiefly of winter scenes, by Walter King Stone, grace the pages and the contents are: Landlord to the birds; Jim Crow; The cheerful chickadee; The menace from above; By inland waters; Poking around for birds’ nests; The queen of the swamp; Forgotten roads; From a Berkshire cabin; Little folks that gnaw; The ways of the woodchuck; Foxes and other neighbors; In praise of trees; Enjoying the influenza; Adventures with an ax; Weeds above the snow.
+ Booklist 17:61 N ’20 + Boston Transcript p7 N 24 ’20 290w + Ind 103:441 D 25 ’20 170w
“He has written of the birds and animals of the Berkshires with an accuracy perfected by long observation and with a sympathy arising from sincere affection.”
+ N Y Times p18 D 26 ’20 500w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson