1 FEBRUARY 1868, Page 22

CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Indian and Colonial Directory, 1868. (G. Street.)—This is a large and carefully arranged publication, containing the names of all English persons engaged in business in the Indian cities, the Chinese ports, the Australian, New Zealand, South African, and Canadian capitals, in Rio, Buenos Ayres, Valparaiso, Panama, and Barbadoes, and of all persons known to be in business relations with them in the great cities of the United Kingdom. It will be found, no doubt, of great use to all persons desirous of finding an address in any of those places, and the publishers appear, so far as we can test their work by personal knowledge, to be

trying hard to overcome their greatest difficulty,—time. Nobody who has not tried it can imagine the difficulty of compiling such works for places thousands of miles off, filled with a shifting population, which not only changes its habitation, but its business, with a rapidity and careless- ness unknown in Europe. The work contains all the tariffs of the countries within its sweep, and needs nothing but that gradual expan- sion of object and range which has been so marked in all the great directories of the United Kingdom.