Books › Blue Book v050 n04 [1930-02], 1930 › scan 6
Scan 6
Blue Book v050 n04 [1930-02], 1930
16 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Wild Heritage
3DRAGONS, unicorns, leviathans, tremendous terrible beasts of all sorts are described in the folklore of nearly all peoples—Chinese and Hebrew, Indian and African, European and Malay. Imaginary? Not at all. Your scientist carefully compares and investigates—and reports that these stories of strange fearful creatures, handed down from father to son through many generations, are merely descriptions of the great monsters that once actually did inhabit this now tamed earth of ours—monsters like the mammoth that was found nearly intact in the ice of Siberia, like the saber-toothed tigers whose skeletons have been preserved for us in the asphalt of California, or the still more primitive beasts whose fossil bones have been dug up in many parts of the world.
5The memory and intuitive dread of the prehistoric animals are graven deep in our brains; and so stories dealing with the creatures of the wilderness wake within us primordial thrills powerful indeed. That is why, probably, the stories of Tarzan, unique in their re-creation of primeval life, have an unparalleled attraction for most of us.
7That is why, moreover, other stories dealing with battle, violence and outdoor adventure of all kinds give a wholesome delight to the most civilized of us. Why we so enjoy, for example, Warren Miller's stories of his Hell's Angels Squad in their savage Saharan conflicts, why, in stories of actual fact, we take so much interest in a chronicle of desperate warfare like Norman Hall's history of the Kosciuszko Squadron "Dragoons of the Air."
9Close under the surface, indeed, we are very primitive folk; and that is well, for the simple, normal things are mostly wholesome. You will find many other stories in this issue which recognize these facts and which you are therefore sure to enjoy. And in the next number likewise.
11In this next, the March number, for example, Tarzan's extraordinary adventure among the primitive men and beasts of weird Pellucidar comes to its terrific climax. Again in fiction the Foreign Legion and in fact the Kosciuszko Squadron will bring to you the warrior thrill of combat. And a colorful romance by that favorite BLUE BOOK writer Frederick Bechdolt will give you a share in a splendid history of love and battle on the California coast.
13Nor will our more sophisticated tastes be neglected. Clarence Herbert New will offer one of the best of those dramas of international intrigue "Free Lances in Diplomacy"; Bertram Atkey will contribute a specially amusing episode in the light-hearted lives of the Easy Street experts; Arthur Akers will give us a rollicking colored comedy; and there will be many other stories to persuade you to agree with us that the March issue is something no reader should miss.
15—The Editor.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.