LITERARY NOTICES. 



129 



parte, Wilson, and other celebrities, visited 

 the location ; and the names of some, cut 

 by themselves in the bark of one of the old 

 beeches that guards a famous spring, are 

 still to be deciphered. Such is the neigh- 

 borhood which Mr. Abbott has explored for 

 its natural history resources, and the results 

 of which are described in these " Rambles 

 about Home." His book is most entertain- 

 ing. It is wi'itten in a simple, unaffected, 

 and entirely untechnical style, and the reader 

 becomes at once interested wherever he dips 

 into the book. Mr. Abbott writes constantly 

 of what he has himself seen, and he has been 

 a painstaking and indefatigable searcher of 

 all kinds of curious and interesting things 

 in the life-history of the beasts, birds, fishes, 

 and reptiles which belong to his immediate 

 region. It is unnecessary to give illustra- 

 tions here of his way of working, as we have 

 already quoted from his teeming pages in 

 the August " Monthly " ; but we cordially 

 recommend the volume to those in search 

 of useful and agreeable reading as one of 

 the pleasantest books of the season. 



The Discoveries of America to thb Year 

 1525. By Arthur James Wkise. New 

 York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 380, 

 with Maps. Price, $4.50. 

 This book bears the marks of industri- 

 ous research in fields that have not yet been 

 overworked, and which offer irresistible al- 

 lurements to the historical inquirer. Start- 

 ing with the assertion that " America in the 

 early ages was one of the inhabited parts of 

 the earth," the author accepts as historical 

 the story of Atlantis, which is said by Plato 

 to have been told by the Egyptian priests 

 to Solon, and repeats it, while he finds con- 

 firmation of a part, at least, of its incidents 

 in the biblical account of the first men. He 

 discredits the relations of the discoveries of 

 America by the Northmen as resting " more 

 upon conjecture than evidence." Then, re- 

 viewing briefly the stories of the voyage of 

 the Welsh Madoc and of the discoveries of 

 the Zeni brothers, and the travels of Marco 

 Polo and Sir John de Mandeville, he finds 

 himself at last upon safer ground in treat- 

 ing the history of the voyages of the early 

 Portuguese navigators, and Columbus, and 

 of those who followed them. The whole 

 is enriched with copious citations from the 

 mass of literature on the subject, ancient 



VOL. XXVI. — 9 



and modern, much of which is rare. On 

 this point the author remarks that the writ- 

 ing of his work " required the personal ex- 

 amination of many old and rare books, 

 manuscripts, and maps, besides the perusal 

 of a large number of recent papers and publi- 

 cations relating to its subject. The task fur- 

 ther demanded a careful review and compari- 

 son of the various statements of historical 

 writers concerning the voyages of the per- 

 sons whom they believed to have been the 

 discoverers of certain parts of America. . . . 

 It seemed to me that some of the informa- 

 tion contained in the different works which 

 I had examined should be presented in the 

 language of the writers, or in faithful trans- 

 lations, so that the intended significance of 

 the information could be perceived by the 

 reader." Thus, by its matter, and the way 

 in which it is presented, the work is one of 

 great value and unusual interest. 



Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town- 

 Meeting. By James K. Hosmer. Bal- 

 timore : N. Murray. Pp. 60. Price, 

 35 cents. 



This sketch, which is based on studies 

 for a new life of Samuel Adams, is one of 

 the " Johns Hopkins University Studies " 

 in Historical and Political Science. Its aim 

 is, first, to present a life-like picture of the 

 New England town-meeting in its purest 

 state as illustrated in the meetings of Bos- 

 ton town in colonial times ; and, second, to 

 exhibit Samuel Adams as the conspicuous 

 leader of the town-meeting, and as one of 

 the ablest as well as one of the purest man- 

 agers of men in our history. The tracing 

 of Adams's work in the under-currents of 

 politics is very clear; and from it he ap- 

 pears as a principal though not always an 

 open director of the movements, in the 

 South as well as in the North, that resulted 

 in the Revolution. 



On the Nature op Light. By George G. 

 Stokes, M. A., F. R. S., etc. London : 

 Macmillan & Co. Pp. 133. Price, 75 

 cents. 



Professor Stokes, having been appoint- 

 ed to deliver three annual courses of lectures, 

 on the endowment of John Burnett, of Ab- 

 erdeen, chose " Light " as his general sub- 

 ject, and devoted the four lectures of the 

 first course to a discussion of the nature of 



