21 JANUARY 1911, Page 22

rah NEW EDITION OF "THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA-"$

WE have just received the first half of this new edition. The most self-confident of critics would hesitate to pronounce an opinion at so brief a notice of the literary and scientific

• The Isles of Scilly: their Story, their Folk, and their Plower,. Painted and Described by Jessie Mothersole. London : B.T.S. [10s. 6d. net.1 t The Domain of Belief. By Henry John Coke. London: Macmillan and Co. f7s. 6d..] The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Eleventh Edition. Vols. I.-X117. Cam- bridge: at the University Press. [29 vols. at 15s. 10d. per vol.] value of the contents of these fourteen volumes. Still, it may be legitimate to give some first impressions. A thing that strikes one at once is the great reduction in size and weight. The tenth edition, which was made .up of the twenty-five volumes of the ninth and eleven supplementary volumes, occupies a space, longitudinally measured, of ten feet and a half ; the twenty-nine volumes of the eleventh will be accommodated in something less than a third of this. This difference, accomplished by the use of India paper, is an immense boon to the private purchaser. For the libraries of great houses and public institutions, where room is not so much a question, the impression on ordinary paper, having some advantages of its own, will probably be preferred. When we come to open the volume we see at once an increase of matter. Each page is both broader and longer, the differ- ence not being more than the fraction of an inch, but still making a considerable increase when the total number of pages is so large. Another obvious change is the multiplica- tion of illustrations in the text. " Climate," for instance, in the ninth edition occupies something less than six pages ; "Climate and Climatology" in the eleventh extends to nearly eighteen, with two full-page plates, besides diagrams occurring in the reading matter. Another difference is to be observed at first sight in the range of the matter included. In Vol. VI. of Edition IX. " Climate " is the third article, being preceded by " Clichy-la-Garemae and " Clifton." To these is added in the supplementary volume of X. a biographical notice of William Kingdon Clifford. In XI. we find these additions :—" Cliff Dwellings," an article relating to the Red Indian tribes ; " Clifford," an account of the well- known family of that name ; " Clifford (John), British Non- conformist and politician" (an inclusion of no small import- ance as extending the. biographical element) ; " Clifford of Chudleigh," a politician of some importance in the days of Charles II.; " Clim (or Clym) of the Clough"; and " Climacteric." One other detail may be supplied from the title-pages. Vol. I. of IX. bears the date of 1875 and the last supplementary volume 1903 ; the whole of XI. is to have that of 1910.11.