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Siberia:
A Record of Travel, Climbing, and Exploration.
BY SAMUEL TURNER, F.R.G.S.
WITH A PREFACE BY BARON HEYKING.
_With more than 100 Ill.u.s.trations, and with 2 Maps._
_Demy 8vo, cloth, 21/-net._
The materials for this book were gathered during a journey in Siberia in 1903. Helped by over 100 merchants (Siberian, Russian, Danish and English) the writer was able to collect much information, and observe the present social and industrial condition of the country. The trade and country life of the mixed races of Siberia is described, and valuable information is given about their chief industry (dairy produce), which goes far to dissipate the common idea that Siberia is snow-bound, and to show that it is now one of the leading agricultural countries in the world.
The author describes his unaccompanied climbs in the mountains which he discovered in the Kutunski Belki range in the Altai, about 800 miles off the Great Siberian Railway line from a point about 2,500 miles beyond Moscow. He made a winter journey of 1,600 miles on sledge, drosky, and horseback, 250 miles of this journey being through country which has never been penetrated by any other European even in summer. He also describes 40 miles of what was probably the most difficult winter exploration that has ever been undertaken, proving that even the rigour of a Siberian winter cannot keep a true mountaineer from scaling unknown peaks.
The volume is elaborately ill.u.s.trated from photographs by the author.
"To the trader and to the explorer, and to many who are neither, but who love to read books of travel and to venture in imagination into wild places of the earth, this book is heartily to be commended. It is lively, entertaining, instructive. It throws fresh light on the Empire of the Czars. Above all, it is a record of British pluck."--_Scotsman._
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
John Chinaman at Home
BY THE REV. E. J. HARDY,
Author of "How to be Happy though Married"; lately Chaplain to H.M.
Forces in Hong Kong.
_With 36 Ill.u.s.trations. Demy 8vo, cloth, 10/6 net._
CONTENTS.
Hong Kong; Tientsin and Peking; Canton; On the West River; Swatow, Amoy, Foochow; Up the Yangtze; Village Life; Topsy-turvy; Some Chinese Characteristics; Chinese Food; Medicine and Surgery; Chinese Clothes; Houses and Gardens; Chinese Servants; Betrothal and Marriage; Death and Burial; Mourning; Education in China; Boys in China; Girls and Women; Chinese Manners; Government in China; Punishments; Chinese Soldiers; The Religions of China; Outside and Inside a Temple; New Year's Day; Monks and Priests; Spirits; Feng s.h.i.+u and other Superst.i.tions; Missionaries; as the Chinese See Us.
The reader will not be bored with politics or the "future of China," for the book only treats of the common every-day things of the Chinese which seem so peculiar to us. These are described and, when possible, explained. Anecdotes are freely used to ill.u.s.trate.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
_Demy 8vo, cloth, 21/-_
Somerset House, Past and Present
BY RAYMOND NEEDHAM AND ALEXANDER WEBSTER.
_With Photogravure Frontispiece and many Ill.u.s.trations._
This book deals with the history of Somerset House from its foundation by the Lord Protector in 1547 to the present day. It is as far as possible a continuous record of the events which in times gone by gathered ill.u.s.trious personages within the walls of the old palace and made it a centre of English social life. For two centuries Somerset House was the home of Queens and Princesses; it was a.s.sociated with the stalwart Protestants of the Reformation and the intriguing Catholics of the Revolution; it has pa.s.sed through greater vicissitudes than almost any other secular edifice in London.
The modern building housed the early exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, a Naval Museum, the Royal and other learned Societies, until, within the last fifty years, it was given over to its present occupants and the matter-of-fact romance of the Imperial Revenue. The history includes the story of King's College, which since its inauguration has occupied a building erected on the eastern edge of the site, and designed to harmonise with the main structure. The volume is ill.u.s.trated by reproductions of rare old prints and a fine series of modern photographs.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
_Demy 8vo, cloth, 10/6 net._
The Age of the Earth, and other Geological Studies
BY W. J. SOLLAS, LL.D., D.Sc., F.R.S.
Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford
_Ill.u.s.trated._
This volume, while written by one of the foremost of English geologists, will be found interesting and attractive by the reader who has no special knowledge of the science. The essay which gives the book its t.i.tle sets forth the bearing of the doctrine of evolution on geological speculation, and particularly on the vexed question of our planet's antiquity. The subjects of the other studies include the following: The Figure of the Earth, and the Origin of the Ocean; Geologies and Deluges; the Volcanoes of the Lipari Isles; the History and Structure of a Coral Reef; the Origin and Formation of Flints; the Evolution of Freshwater Animals; and the Influence of Oxford on Geology.
"They range over a great variety of subjects, including many which are of sufficiently wide interest to bring the geologist into sympathetic touch with the general reader. What educated man can fail to be interested in such subjects, for instance, as the age of the earth, the building of coral islands, the cause of volcanic action, or the Deluge?
Of all these matters the Professor discourses pleasantly and well, writing with command of much scientific learning, yet always readably, sometimes with brilliancy of diction, and occasionally with a touch of humour."--_Athenaeum._
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
Six Standard Works.
