11 JUNE 1910, Page 29

The Annual Register, 1909. (Longmans and Co. 18s.)—This "Review of

Public Events at Home and Abroad" is as carefully made as usual. It is divided into two parts. In this wo have (1) a section dealing with "English History" (a brief chapter is given specially to Scotland and Ireland, while another, entitled " Supplementary," gives a conspectus of " Finance and Trade in 1909"; these together contain two hundred and eighty-four pages out of a total of six hundred and twenty-seven) ; and (2) "Foreign History," more properly entitled, when we come to this section, " Foreign and Colonial History." It would certainly, as we have had occasion before now to remark, bo better to make a clearer distinction between them. Why should not all the Colonial chapters have precedence? As it is, we find " British India " coming in chap. 7 along with other Asiatic States. In the second part we have "A Chronicle of Events " ; Retrospects of Literature, Science, Art, the Drama, and Music ; and an Obituary.