Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social
Science. 1863. Edited by George W. Hastings, LL.B., General Secre- tary. (Longman and Co.)—No one who has not consulted one of these annual volumes can have an adequate idea of tho amount of valuable information they contain and in how readable a shape. One is apt to thrust aside the rather bulky publication as if it were a sort of blue book, forgetting that it is in fact a collection of short essays on subjects of the first importance, by the men who are most familiar with the subjects of which they write. And these essays are carefully pruned of all extraneous matter, so that one never throws the paper aside half read, as one so often does lengthier treatises, with the impatient criticism, —why does not the man come to the point? There never were books with so little padding in them. To all public boards and municipal authori- ties they are simply indispensable, as those bodies have long ago discovered ; but the general reader also will find in them moro infor- mation, and even where he disagrees with the writer, more useful suggestions on the social questions of the day than in any other works we could name.
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