HE Central Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History in Co-operation with Asia Magazine (to give it its full title) has been in Mongolia every summer since 1921, and by the fall of 1928 they expect their field work to be ended. It will be seen that this book, "On the Trail of Ancient Man," by Roy Chapman Andrews, large and imposing though it is, is by no means a comprehensive account of their explorations. Dr. Andrews is insistent on the point. Fourteen volumes of material have been projected and are being written; he expects to write a condensed version himself; and in the meantime this large green tome is put forward as a sort of tabloid extra, that the public may know a little of what has been going on in the Gobi Desert.

In 1901 Professor Osborn, President of the Museum of Natural History, pointed out that the same kind of mammal and reptile remains have been found in the great fossil beds of Europe and in the Rocky Mountains-beds separated by thousands of miles in which not a single similar form is found. It was his theory that these animals moved there from a great dispersal center, probably in northern Asia, and he buttressed the theory with many long words and intricate diagrams to show that northern Asia was not only the Mother of Continents but very probably, like Fair Amherst, Mother of Men. This is the theory that Dr. Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expedition have set out to prove, and, so far, they seem to be doing it. One of the penalties of success which Dr. Andrews has earned is that for many years the public will think of him as the Big Fossil and Egg Man from Mongolia. He should not mind, for he has gone with his ninety-seven camels, his Sonora phonograph, and seven Dodge cars where scientific friends assured him nothing ever had been found and nothing ever would be found, and brought back, not only dinosaur eggs, but Chalicothere, Lophirdon, Corypho

1 On the Trail of Ancient Man. By Roy Chapman Andrews. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $5.

don, Baluchitherium grangeri, and Protoceratops andrewsi to crush the skeptics with the weight of their syllables.

Readers who do not accept the Legis

From "On the Trail of Ancient Man"

discovery of Dr. Andrews and his associates were six little skulls, each about an inch and a half long. These, it has recently been proved, were mammal skulls very primitive mammal skulls from the Cretaceous Period in the Age of Reptiles. Dr. Andrews has at least one of the missing links. He has shown to the satisfaction of any normal reader that all the forms of life in the Ameri

Young dinosaurs coming out of their eggs. lature of Tennessee as the final author

ity are probably well enough acquainted with the basic facts of the evolution of life to understand what these men are driving at. They know that at various driving at. They know that at various periods in the development of the earth's periods in the development of the earth's surface there have been particular forms of life best adapted to the conditions about them, that each in their day prospered mightily, and gave way to other types as the earth changed; that the age of reptiles succeeded the age of fish, that reptiles gave way to mammals, and they in turn to man. We also know that these changes were most gradual, that when the greatest of the dinosaurs ruled the earth there were insignificant little animals running about who didn't lay eggs, and that in the days of the mastodons and mammoths there were a few primates who started to walk on their hind feet. Probably the most important

Courtesy G. P. Putnam's Sons Restoration by E. M. Fulda

can and European fossil beds exist in t Mongolia; that Central Asia is, with reasonable certainty, the oldest of the continents; that towards the end of the age of mammals the Gobi Desert was a temperate, semi-forested plateau ideally suited to the development of mankind; and he has found Neolithic stone implements. "On the Trail of Ancient Man" his book is called. He hasn't found him yet, but he is getting warm.

But to return to the book. Charles Darwin made contributions to science even more important than these, which did not prevent him from writing some of the dullest books that ever burdened a library shelf. Here, though, is better news. If Turkey ever was the Sick Man of Europe, then surely China and Mongolia have been the Free Lunch of the East since the war. Russia, Japan, and the European Legations have grabbed

what they could get. Chang Tso-lin and Wu Pei-fu and other bellicose gentlemen have led their several armies about, shooting at one another when the weather was fine and slitting non-combatants' throats on Sundays. The land has grown so infested with bandits that for five years the great caravan roads have been practically deserted, and several times they have had to suspend play on the Shanghai golf course.

.

Into this country comes Roy Chapman Andrews with the seven Dodges and the phonograph and the ninety-seven camels. Thieving officials, brigands, wretched Mongol women in constant fear of their lives, white men who have been tortured and lived-he sees them all and notes them, but all the time his every thought is for an egg that didn't hatch and a tooth that chewed ten million years ago. It is rather magnificent. Cadmus sowed the dragon's teeth, you remember, and a field of armed men sprang up to conquer his enemies. Andrews has dug up enough real dragons' teeth to put to rout a field of Fundamentalists. The thought comes particularly to mind when we read that he has, like Jason, slain the Golden Fleece. Budorcas bedfordi is their scientific name, and their hair really is as golden in color as Jason thought it would be. Andrews has brought three of them back to the Museum with no Medea to help him.

Let us place one sprig of raspberry in this bouquet of roses. There are passages in the book that will shock many of our intelligentsia. . I use the word advisedly, for ideas of morality change, but the capacity for moral indignation is constant. We now regard the use of shopworn phrases, traces of sentimentality, or the frame of mind that is known as "Babbittism" exactly as our grandfathers regarded cigarettes for women, profanity on the stage, or the works of M. Zola. Dr. Andrews does not claim to be a novelist or an essayist, I believe. He is a zoologist who knows more about geology, ichthyology, palæontology, botany, and the rest of them than all the Flaming Youth and their favorite novelists and columnists can ever hope to, and for ninety-eight per cent of the book he tells his story in a simple, direct manner that is highly praiseworthy. But occasionally the craving for literary fixin's descends upon him, and there are sentences like: "The wild free life calls to their primitive instincts; life in the raw, stripped of artificial conventions, where strength, endurance, and courage are the ultimate test, where the last resource is the Man Himself." And "In the painted desert

New Floors

for a

Few Dollars

New Household
Machine

Scrapes-Refinishes
Waxes

A skilled carpenter working many could not make that surface smoother.

A NEW and extraordinary method of caring for floors is here offered you. It is radically different from anything in your experience. It is the application of electric power and mechanical genius to an old, old problem. New floors and old-both show amazing improvement. Five Astonishing Results

The Ponsell Electric Floor Machine brings you five important benefits.

First, it removes from a wood floor all the hardened dirt, the old shellac or varnish. Once more you see the lovely surface of the wood itself.

Second, it sandpapers the surface to a texture of satin.

hours

Third, it rubs wax into the wood. It rubs with a speed and vigor impossible to attain by hand. Thus, by friction, the wax warms, spreads evenly over the entire surface, goes 100% farther.

Fourth, it polishes and how it polishes! Your floor gleams with a surpassing luster, assumes a mellow natural glow, glistening on in spite of dust and footsteps. And refinishing only needs to be done ONCE! All that is necessary afterward is a few minutes waxing and polishing once in awhile-an operation that the machine makes absurdly easy. Then your floors always look as though they had been refinished the day before.

Fifth, the machine scrubs such floors as need scrubbing. Thus it cleans them thoroughly, more thoroughly perhaps than they have ever before been cleaned.

Floors of All Types

It makes no difference what kind of floors you have this little machine will put them in firstclass condition and keep them so. If they are wood, it will refinish them, or clean them, or polish them. If linoleum, it will scrub them without the least splashing to spotless cleanliness, then polish them until your face is mirrored. It gives linoleum a lustre surpassing anything you have ever known before-a surface so immaculately smooth that dust and dirt have a hard time sticking to it. Tile, marble, mosaic or rubber cork, terrazzo or cement - the machine wins enthusiastic praise for its saving of human strength, its speed in doing the work and the perfect condition to which it brings the floor.

No Skill No Muss

You know what it is to have workmen in the house. You know the dirt and litter that comes with them. You know the annoying damage to your possessions that usually follows in their wake; you know that you will pay a good high price for the work they do. Refinish floors yourself and avoid all this.

With the machine it is ridiculously easy. No skill is necessary, no great strength or energy. The machine is easier to operate than a vacuum cleaner. You do not push or pull it-you simply guide it. In a few minutes eight-year-old children have become expert in its operation.

Thousands in Use

This machine is no mere experiment. It is the outgrowth of fourteen years of study and research by men who have made the care of floors a science. In thousands of homes this little machine is setting new standards for well-kept floors. We have letters from people of high standing in all parts of the country telling us what a boon the Ponsell machine has been to them. "Greatest labor saving device we have,' says one woman. "Old, neglected floors now in good condition," reports another. And still another writes, "Have lost my dread of waxing days.

A Demonstration Free Our greatest argument is the machine's actual performance. You owe it to yourself to see a demonstration. You owe it to your home to learn more of this wonderful machine. Use the coupon; ask us for further information; let us tell you which of our 24 branch offices is nearest to you, so that you may arrange if you wish for a FREE demonstration in your own home or a 10-day FREE trial if you are too far from the nearest office.

“UNHID▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪----------------------------------------

Ponsell Floor Machine Co.
Dept. 59

220-230 West 19th Street, N. Y. C.

Please mail me complete information and prices regarding your Electric Floor Machine. This does not obligate me in any way whatever.

Address...........................

City...

................State...........O-9

Telephoning over a ray of light

Building on the Telephone Principle

casting entertainment and carrying important information to the remotest regions.

But new applications of the telephone principle are still being found. In the loud speaker, in the deaf set, the electrical stethoscope, the improved phonograph, the telephone principle has been adapted by the Bell Telephone Laboratories to the uses of the physician, the public speaker and the musician. The scientific research and engineering skill, which enable America to lead the world in telephone service, are also bringing forth from the telephone principle other devices of great usefulness.

of Gobi; in steaming Borneo jungles; among palm trees on the enchanted islands of the East Indies; in the wilderness of Korean forests; along the fogbound shores of Bering Sea-wherever I måde my little camp-fire, there was 'home.' But it has been a happy life and a full one. Not for an instant would I have changed it for the static existence of a palace on Fifth Avenue." These are estimable sentiments surely, but we could wish he hadn't put them just that way-and these aren't the only ones, mark you! To the effete modern ear they are almost as cataclysmic as if one of Miss Alcott's Little Women had said: "Aw, so's your old man!"

Dr. Andrews does not happen to be William Beebe or W. H. Hudson, and perhaps it is not to be expected that he should be. He has made some of the most important discoveries of this generation in the science of evolution; he has shot the Golden Fleece and that poetic animal, the Wild Ass of the Gobi; he has been to the Flaming Cliffs of Shabarakh Usu and the City of the Living God. What more do you want?

Fiction

OKLAHOMA. By C. R. Cooper. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $2.

The scenes when Oklahoma first and later the Cherokee Strip were open to homesteaders had dramatic elements enough to furnish forth scores of novels, but this is the only one we remember to have seen. The hero was in the race for land location and was first aid to Pawnee Bill. The author has led an adventurous life and knows his subject. In fact, plot and love story would probably have been better if he had not been so absorbed in the historical side.

Landscape Architecture

By William G. P. Put

LAY THOUGHTS OF A DEAN. Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's. nam's Sons, New York. $3. These papers, which have appeared in various periodicals, embrace a large number of subjects, literary, political, social, and religious. Whether or not we always agree with the Dean, his essays are always worth reading. To use his own words spoken of Alfred Noyes: "He is a hard hitter, giving vent to a strong and healthy indigestion. He will stir up a wasp's nest, but he can take care of himself." He dislikes Bolshevists, Russians, literary and artistic, Socialism, faith healing, bricklayers, gambling, and the new rich; while. he speaks well of classical studies, the Victorians, English public schools, Walter Page, eugenics, birth control, and Modernism. What he says about America is interesting, but he goes perhaps a little too far when he speaks of the "Crime of 1812,"

when we "stabbed England in the back while she was fighting for her existence and for the liberties of Europe."

Comets

The comments on comets printed in the Book Table, August 11, 1926 (in connection with Miss Mary Proctor's book, "The Romance of Comets"), have elicited a number of letters. Apparently there are many readers of The Outlook who feel deeply upon the subject of comets and meteors. In this respect they are like the writer of that article. Some of them are respectful toward the comets, and some of them are inclined to be irreverent.

N. C. Crandall writes from Baraboo, and relates some of his or her experiences with comets in the State of Washington. In accordance with the practice of those regions, he makes some slighting references toward New York and the Great White Way. He admits that he wearied of waiting for Halley's comet, but asserts that when it arrived it was a magnificent sight. It extended from Willapa Harbor to the Cowlitz River region, so it is clear that it could have been no disappointment. In fact, we gather that it was one more triumph of the West over the East.

From Hibbing, Minnesota, comes a letter from Mr. Charles Edward Roe. He agrees with me about Halley's comet, and adds some family experiences with that swarm of meteors called the Leonids, which used to turn up promptly every thirty-three years until they slipped their trolley in 1899. Mr. Roe's grandfather had a frightful experience, in 1833, while returning from a husking bee. The air was full of meteors, and the young man narrowly escaped with his life. He sought refuge under a stone bridge, into which retreat he was actually pursued by some of the more vicious Leonids. In 1866 these meteors forgot their feud with the Roe family, so

MEDITERRANEAN

EGYPT-PALESTINE - NEAR EAST

Sailing Jan. 26, 1927 - Limited to 400 Guests

Madeira, Spain, Gibraltar, Algiers, Tunis, Palermo, Messina, Taormina, Syracuse, Malta, Constantinople, Greece, Venice, Naples, Riviera, Monte Carlo, France, England.

met with no misfortune whatever. He missed seeing them, it is true, but while waiting for them to appear he and his friends, veterans of the Civil War, engaged in a friendly little game which turned out very much to the profit of the Mr. Roe of that time. This good luck continued down to the present generation, although the Leonids were still shy in 1899.

The Rev. Mr. T. D. Jones writes from Espanola, Ontario, to describe an evening in Staffordshire, England, in 1899. Here, also, the Leonids failed to perform as advertised, and the spectacle might have been a disappointment to the observers in the town had not a group of young boys thoughtfully provided Roman candles and rockets. The amateur astronomers, who had been keeping themselves warm with various liquids, were quite satisfied with the display. It is odd to note, by the way, how frequent are the references to alcoholic drink in the narratives of these lonely watchers of the skies. There must be some direct connection between astronomy and the juice of the grape or the corn.

One of the most interesting of the letters came from Mr. George H. Remele, of Palo Alto, California. In 1866 he was a boy of fifteen, living in Middlebury, Vermont. Early in the morning of November 13 he saw the beginning of the shower of Leonids. (This was the shower which other observers have reported as no disappointment, but as a wonderful sight. Edwin Booth was born during the great shower of meteors, November 13, 1833.) Mr. Remele awakened his family, who watched the meteors from 2 A.M. until after daybreak. There would be scores falling at the same instant. Tens of thousands shot across the sky, and some of the most brilllant were observed after daylight.-E. P.

valuable

cal books not generally advertised. The Freethought Pub. Co., Desk 101, 1658 Broadway, New York City

Privately Printed for Subscribers

The Real
Arabian Nights

Translated from the

Literal and Complete
French Version of Dr. J. C.
Mardrus, by E. Powys Mathers

NEVER before have these gorgeous

tales been so completely revealed
to English readers as in Mr. Mathers'
gay and piquant translation, beside
which all other versions appear
heavy and labored. The Mathers
translation bears you on wings; it
omits nothing in the original; it is
for the reader who admires candor
in language as well as in conduct.
Says the English Review of Reviews:
"The Arabian Nights' have just
appeared in a new dress. The new
translation, privately printed for sub-
scribers, is from the French of Dr.
J. C. Mardrus, and is the work of
Mr. E. Powys Mathers. It is incom-
parably the best we have ever had."

Upwards of 4,000 pages, printed on
very fine watermarked Bond Paper.
Frontispieces in Four Colors from
Persian Illuminations.

Sixteen Volumes bound in Four, each
6%" by 9" by 2" thick. Price
per Set, $50.00.

Brochure on Request

DINGWALL-ROCK, LTD. Dept. 99

45 West 45th Street New York City

London

Independent Travel Service throughout

Europe

Securing All
Reservations in
Advance.

Send for Book E.

Round the World

including meals and accommodations aboard magnificent President Liners

110 DAYS of glorious adventure in 14 countries. 22 colorful world ports. Honolulu, Japan, China, Manila, Malaya, Ceylon, Egypt, Italy, France, Boston, New York, Havana, the Panama Canal and California.

Great, oil-burning liners, they are broad of beam, steady and comfortable. Commodious, outside rooms. A world-famous cuisine. And all for a price that is little if any more than it costs you to live at home.

A sailing every Saturday from San Francisco (every fortnight from Boston and New York.) Full information from any ticket or tourist agent, or

Dollar
Steamship
Line