Ir has been truly said that speedy com- munications corrupt
good manners, but only, surely, if these are taken for granted. If, on the contrary, the questioning mind seeks origins and causes, development and growth, bad manners may well be replaced by a reverent wonder. But since the questioning mind in adults is all too sadly rare, how wise the provident parent who seeks to inculcate it in childhood, how fortunate the wealthy parent who can spare thirty shillings to do so on the subject of communications by purchasing volume four of the Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia. This admirable series has, if such a thing were possible, even improved on its earlier volumes. As before, the type-face is clear and sufficiently large, and the illustrations are even more varied and of absorbing interest. The subject- matter begins with aerobatics, and ranges through the Chinese language, heraldry, magazines and periodicals, the history of measurements —to choose at random. In- deed, if any single book could improve adult manners by opening a closed mind to an interest in causation, the Oxford Juhior Encyclopaedia, volume four, is it. M. L.
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