BOOK NOTICES. 193 
BOOK NOTICES, 
The Golden Chersonese: By Isabella L. Bird. Octavo, pp. 483, with illus- 
trations and map. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1883. For sale by 
M. H. Dickinson. 
Mrs. Bishop certainly excels most travelers in selecting interesting travel- 
gi;ounds and presenting their salient features attractively. She also has a faculty 
of picking up new items even in old fields and serving them up tastefully. Her 
previous books, such as "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan," "A Lady's Life in the 
Rocky Mountains," "The Hawaian Archipelago," etc., are well known evi- 
dences of these qualifications, and this latest volume is no exception. 
The Golden Chersonese, known to the earlier geographers as Cherronesus 
Aurea, and to later ones as the Malay Peninsula, has been sung by Milton and 
other poets, described by Ptolemy, and its identity with the Ophir of Solomon 
discussed by many writers, but its actual metes and bounds are clearly understood 
by but comparatively few. The derivation of the word Chersonesus sufficiently 
indicates that it is a peninsula, and yet it is more generally than otherwise under- 
stood to be an archipelago, while the average reader rarely identifies it as Malacca. 
It is nearly or quite as large as Lower California, but has twelve times as 
many inhabitants, or, about 375,000. It is rich in minerals, iron-ore of 60 per 
cent purity being used for macadamizing the roads, tin having been found in 
vast quantities in placers, and gold so abundantly, especially in the past, as to 
have given rise to the theory above alluded to that the country is the original 
" Ophir." The natives are so jealous of foreigners that but little is known of i'.s 
internal government, geography, history, or natural products, and not more than 
half of its immense area has been explored. Consequently these letters of Mrs. 
Bishop's carry with them more than the ordinary piquancy and interest of travelers' 
stories in general. 
It is difficult to point out the best chapters where all are good, sprightly and 
attractive. The reader will not regret giving a few hours to a perusal of the 
whole book. 
^French Forest Ordinance of 1669: Compiled and translated by John 
Croumbie Brown, LL.D., Edinburgh. Oliver & Boyd, 1883. 
This celebrated ordinance, promulgated by Louis XIV, of France and Na- 
varre, in 1669, though probably the basis and foundation of all forest-preserving 
laws that have followed since, has never before appeared in English dress. Pro- 
fessor Brown, in giving it and an account of the previous treatment of forests in 
France, has rendered a special service to the bibliography of forestry which all per- 
