We have found that men who have not naturally been readers have acquired the habit of reading in our Hospital, and there have been many instances of men who have become out-patients asking for permission to continue to use the library. It has been one of our great pleasures to see old friends strolling into the recreation room and picking out for themselves some book by an author whom they have learnt to know and appreciate. Another gratifying feature of the work has been the anxiety of many of our readers to have a book waiting for them after an operation, so that as soon as possible they may begin to read it and forget some of their pains and sufferings. In many instances the author or the subject has been deliberately chosen beforehand. Our experiences, in fact, have tended to show that a library department organised and run by people who have some knowledge of books might prove to be a useful asset in any hospital, both military and civil, and be the means of affording not only amusement and distraction, but even definite education, induced of course, not insisted on. To obtain satisfactory results it would seem, however, that even a good and carefully chosen collection of books of all kinds does not suffice. In addition, an official librarian is needed who will supply the initiative, which in the circumstances is of necessity lacking, and whose duty it is to visit the wards, study the temperaments, inclinations, and possibilities of the patients, and thus find out by direct personal intercourse what will amuse, help, stimulate, lift—and heal. _LOST HORSES._ A month or so after the traitor Maritz had made his flamboyant proclamation in German South-West Africa, a small body of mounted Union troops was operating in a district which may be described as ‘somewhere near Upington.’ Probably such secrecy of places and names is not at all necessary, but it lends an appropriate military flavour to the small events I describe. I may go so far as to say that the setting I have provided is fictitious, though similar events did, no doubt, occur in the operations against Maritz and Kemp and their heroes. The characters of the roan horse and of the boy Frikkie are true to life, and the small adventures did occur much as described, but in another country in South Africa and upon a different occasion. Accept the story as fiction, not as history; it will at any rate serve to throw a light upon one of the aspects of the fighting in that dry land, and it illustrates the close relationship between horse and man in that country of long distances and sparse population and infrequent water-holes. The conditions are the absolute antithesis of those in Flanders and the trenches.