OUR CONTRIBUTORS

More than usual interest has been accorded two articles which appeared in The Review last issue: Wilton P. Ledet's "Acadians Find Peace in Louisiana" and H.S. Ladd's "Nature Trails Under the Sea." The study of the Acadian exiles has brought a number of letters of commendation from widely separated states in Region One and at least one Louisiana newspaper has reproduced the article in full . Meanwhile, Dr. Ladd's excellent description of his submarine hike in the Florida Keys has been used as the basis for a special press release distributed by the Everglades National Park Association, Inc.

FEET NOTES

Evidence now piling up each day, the recreational specialists report, tends to substantiate the belief that Americans are on their feet again. Park visitors are interested more than ever before in leaving automobiles behind and faring forth afoot to inhale the atmosphere and explore even the more distant sites to which the expanding systems of nature trails may lead. In short, the revival of walking is growing apace.

The Review, loath to be caught behind hand in the onward march of pedestrianism, took straighway to its books to inquire into the basic truths of that method of self-propulsion which proceeds, as our grandmothers so vaguely phrased it, from movements of the nether extremities. To walk, the 15-pound office dictionary (edition of 1937) disclosed, means "To advance by steps, to go at a moderate pace; specif., of two-legged creatures, to proceed without running, or lifting one foot entirely before the other touches the ground..." That description appeared altogether encouraging. The concession that one is entitled to move forward at a moderate velocity was, within itself, a welcome development, but the lexicographical authority permitting the walker to keep one foot always on the ground is the stalwart rock upon which we shall rear the edifice of our personal athleticism.

Yet, still to be weighed against the sane opinions just cited, there is the disquieting revelation set forth in Websterian definition No. 9 under the heading: "To walk Spanish." That peculiar exercise, it is explained, consists in walking "on tiptoe involuntarily through another's lifting one by the seat of the trousers..." However salutary may be the practice of such a form of recreation, we feel impelled nevertheless to warn against it as an un-American activity whose insidious seeds are being sown among us by wily foreign propagandists.

Genuinely alarmed, we then probed superficially into the philological aspects of the every-day variety of walking. Webster's of 1920 was consulted with a view of determining what glossological ground had been gained, during the intervening 17 years, in its technique. It is with some relief therefore that we report the happy evidence that auto-locomotion, undismayed by the ferment of progress, has held doggedly to its older definitions. In every essential it remains lexigraphically unchanged. The Review accordingly assumes, with many agreeable sensations, that reasonable walking is here to stay. We shall continue to endorse it as top-bracket exercise for man and beast.--H.R.A.