SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
231 
acquainted with Thoreau for the perusal of these volumes, of which the first, or 
at the most first and second, will probably suffice for all but his most enthusiastic 
admirers. The volumes are is. each. 
Another Camelot Classic is Our Village , a selection from Miss Mitford’s 
charming little essay collected under that name, which delighted a past generation 
and still retain favour in this more critical age. It is the country of the past that 
Miss Mitford depicts, when there were no railways, when her village — Three 
Mile Cross, near Reading — had been only “ lately enlivened by a stage-coach,” 
when hay-making was still a pastoral occupation, and farmers were farmers, not 
country gentlemen. Mr. Walter Scott gives us for a shilling almost twice as 
much as Messrs. Sampson, Low and Co. in their volume bearing the same title, 
provide for five times that sum, but the latter is full of excellent illustrations, and 
should be popular as a Christmas gift-book. Neither selection includes “Dora 
Cresswell,” the simple tale on which, as we have said above, our President based 
his beautiful English idyll, Dora. 
Messrs. Cassell send us a pretty little volume called Buckinghamshire 
Sketches, by E. J. Roscoe, with illustrations by H. R. Bloomer. It contains 
short descriptions of such well-known places as Stoke Poges, Olney, Jordans, 
Chenies, and Great Missenden, the home of John Hampden. 
We have received from the S.P.C.K. some of the Romance of Science Series, 
from which we are glad to find that this venerable Society is pushing its work of 
providing good literature into the domains of science. It would be difficult to 
find anyone more capable of dealing with Tune and Tide than Sir Robert Ball, 
the Royal Astronomer of Ireland, who has published in this form two lectures 
delivered at the London Institution in the winter of 1S88. Mr. Raphael 
Meldola’s Coal , and what we Get from It, is an expansion of another lecture 
delivered at the same place. Each has an excellent index, and is well worth the 
half-crown at which it is published. A third and smaller volume in the same 
series (price is.), on The Birth and Growth of Worlds , is by Professor A. H. 
Green. 
The same Society issues a shilling series of Manuals of Elementary Science, of 
which we have received Geology, by Professor Bonney ; Physiology, by Dr. Le 
Gros Clark ; Zoology, by Professor Newton ; and Botany, by P rofessor Bentley. 
Each of these would be improved by the addition of a glossary, or of an index, 
which might be made to supply its place, and it must be said that the style of the 
series is somewhat unattractive. Professor Newton’s is the most readable of the 
four, and Professor Bentley’s the least so. 
The matter-of-fact side of country life sometimes escapes the consideration of 
those who admire the cottage whose “ windows full of flowers look out across 
fields of waving corn, and pleasant meadows and dark green woods ; ” with door- 
ways “ sheltered by masses of sweet-smelling honeysuckle,” and gardens “ full of 
cloves and fuchsias, geraniums, and sweet peas.” The shilling volume called Life 
in our Villages (Cassell) brings the reverse of the picture into prominence, and 
although not entirely pleasant reading, is full of information conveyed in an 
interesting manner. 
Mr. G. T. Bettany contributes to Mr. Walter Scott’s Great Writers a short 
Life of Charles Darwin, which gives in small compass a readable summary of the 
great naturalist’s work and discoveries, and is supplemented by the excellent biblio- 
graphy which is one of the most useful features of this series of books. 
We have also received the following books, notices of which are unavoidably 
held over : — 
Nature and Woodcraft, by John Watson. London : Walter Smith and 
Innes. 
The Birds of Our Rambles, by Charles Dixon. London : Chapman and Hall, 
7s. 6d. 
Home Life on an Ostrich Farm, by Annie Martin. London : George Philip, 
3s. 6d. 
