5 MAY 1888, Page 44

Through the West Indies. By Mrs. Granville Layard. (Sampson Low

and Co.)—Mrs. Layard visited Tobago, Trinidad, Demerara, Jamaica, Barbados, and other West Indian Colonies. On the whole, she preferred Barbados, putting, perhaps, Demerara next. The West Indies generally she liked, the hotels excepted. But the climate is such that inconveniences are not of much moment. The reader may learn a good deal about sugar from this little volume ; indeed, the writer inserts, by way of appendix, a state- ment by the Hon. W. H. Jones (Legislative Council of Barbados) of the Colonial grievances. "There is no article of general con- sumption which has been so much legislated upon as sugar, and none in which legislation has operated so injuriously." This is the thesis which Mr. Jones maintains. Let us hope that the " Sugar-Bounty Conference " may have done something to redress the wrongs of which he complains.—Alassio : a Pearl of the Riviera, by Dr. Joseph Schneer (Triibner and Co.), is a description, with historical sketch, of a Riviera town.