Map-Studies of the Mercantile World, and The Golden Gates of
Trade. By John Yeats, LL.D., F.G.S. (George Philip and Son.) —These two volumes of commercial geography are not very brilliant specimens of that numerous class of publications which is the result of the prevalent cry that England's trade supremacy is no longer what it was, and that one great cause is that our merchants are not such scientific students of commerce as their rivals, specially their German rivals. Map-Studies is a book intended to show how to read the map of each country from a. mercantile point of view, so as to find the answers to such questions as : How is the capital of the country best reached from England P What are the industrial characteristics of the people ? What does the country yield for export, and what does it want to import ? What are its principal inlets and outlets by ports, rivers, and railways, and its means of internal communications ? What are the chief sites of its various industries and of its dis- tributing centres, and how have the physical features affected commerce ? In every case, the trade between England and the country in question is the central thought. The other volume, concerning the "Golden Gates of Trade," also relates to the trade of England, but treats the subject in a more general but rather rambling fashion, starting from the abstract foundations of the laws of supply and demand, and working up to their con- crete realisation in the markets, ports, wharves, docks, ware- houses, factories, canals, railways, ships, banks, &c., of this busy country of ours. Apart from a few dubious statements, which are comparatively harmless and help to break the matter- of-fact monotony of the greater part of these volumes, they contain much that the student of commerce ought to know, and each chapter is usefully followed by examination questions on the text. The Golden Gates has also an appendix containing further questions set by Dr. Yeats at public examinations, and also ques- tions from a German work, covering various matters not dealt with in this book, but inserted, we presume, in order to show the wide extent of knowledge required from clerks in German trading- houses.
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