A P P L E T C) N S ' SPRING BULLETIN 



the future of which he is an integral part. It is a protest against the idea, bred 

 of many natural misconceptions, that a human being is something apart from its 

 fellows ; that it is born into the world and dies out of it into the loneliness of a 

 supernatural realm. It is this sense of isolation which, more than all else, is the 

 curse of life and the sting of death." 



Appletons' World Series, the new Geographical Library edited by H. J. Mac- 

 kinder, M. A., Reader in the University of Oxford, will consist of twelve 

 volumes. Each volume will describe a great natural region, its marked physical 

 features, and the life of its people. Together the volumes will give a complete 

 account of the world, more especially as the field of human activity. The series 

 is intended for reading rather than for reference, and will stand removed on the one 

 hand from the monumental work of Reclus, and on the other from the ordinary 

 text-book, gazetteer, and compendium. In their presentation of the facts the au- 

 thors will study above all things perspective, and will seek to convey right propor- 

 tions rather than statistical accuracy. Facts will not be presented merely as facts, 

 but always in their causal or graphic relations. Thus, each volume will give a 

 succession of vivid ideas, to be grasped pictorially, and to remain in the memory. 

 The reader will be led to visualize a great relief model in color, with its seas and 

 Its lands, its uplands and its lowlands, its rivers and their valleys, its forests and 

 deserts, and its seasonal changes. Above all, he will think of it as the stage of 

 human action, and will realize the relations of man — and especially of his economic 

 and political organizations — to the grand features of phvsical geographv. Care 

 will be taken to tell the results of natural and economic science in language devoid 

 of technicality, and to make each of the books interesting and attractive to every 

 reader, although a solid contribution to geographical literature. The series will 

 appeal to teachers, to students, to tourists, to business men, and to the general 

 reader. The teacher will find suggestions for salient points in his teaching ; the 

 general reader will learn the persistent factors controlling the passing events chron- 

 icled in the newspapers ; the tourist will grasp the real working of the community 

 he visits, and not merelv its curiosities and antiquities ; and the merchant will 

 realize the varied circumstances of his markets. Each volume is to be illustrated 

 by manv maps printed in colors and by diagrams in the text ; and it will be a dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic of the series that both maps and diagrams v\ill be drawn 

 so that each of them shall convey some salient idea, and that together they shall 

 constitute a clear epitome of the writer's argument. With a like object the pic- 

 tures also will be chosen so as to illustrate the text, and not merely to decorate it. 

 When possible, the books will be written fi-om the point of view of the region de- 

 scribed, and every effort will be made to avoid bias, patriotic or other. 



The Brass Bottle, the forthcoming romance by F. Anstey, the brilliant author 

 of "Vice Versa" and "The Tinted Venus," shows the author in his happiest 

 vein. The storv is an imaginative romance full of quaint conceits and deliciously 



