26 FEBRUARY 1876, Page 22

Histcny of Prince Edward Island. By Duncan Campbell. (Charlotte Town:

Bremmer.)—This is a carefully compiled book on a little-known corner of our Colonial Empire, and as we are candidly informed in the preface that the "land question " is a great feature of the work, we

author certainly demonstrates most unmistakably that the wholesale granting of land by the Crown, not to intending settlers, but merely to political friends, cannot but be a great curse to a new country. We think a few chapters on the physical geography and natural history of the island would have been a great improvement, and we should like to have had something about the discovery by Sebastian Cabot, and some- thing also of the natives, who are barely mentioned. For some of these things we could have spared even the valuable information touching the death and length of reign of his Majesty George IV. A good map, too, is indispensable for really understanding anything about a place described. There is no doubt that Prince Edward Island, lying, as it does, almost at the gate of Canada, is a most valuable colony, and furnishes an interesting subject. A more complete work, which might easily have taken a rather more popular form, would have been accept- able.