On Blue Water. By J. F. Keane. (Tinsley Brothers.)—" Blue
water" is the water that we meet with some three or four hundred miles from land, where the depth is not less than a hundred fathoms. The most remarkable of the experiences which Mr. Keane has to re- late concerns sharks, animals of which he seems to have a mean opinion. He gives us an account of some elaborate tackle contrived by himself for the capture of these monsters, and adds some very horrible details, which might, we think, have been very well spared, as to the cruelties—and we quite agree with our author that we may be cruel even to sharks—that are sometimes practised upon them. We have also some incidents of sport, or rather holiday-making, in the Sunderbunds, and a strange account of life on board an American merchantman. Mr. Keane thinks, and is doubtless right in thinking, that there are many things which might be altered for the better in our shipping arrangements ; the legal scale of provisions, for in- stance, he says, is but just enough to keep a man alive. But the system cannot be so very bad, considering that we contrive, somehow, to do so large a portion of the carrying trade of the world. Mr. Keane's book, though it scarcely contains matter proportionate to its size, is always readable, and sometimes more.
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