SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.] Britain On and Beyond the Sea. By Cecil H. Crofts, M.A. (W. and A. K. Johnston. is. 6d., with Map, and ls.)—The Navy League has published a wall-map of the world. The author of this volume has written it as a handbook to the map (a reduced copy of it being given by way of frontispiece). Mr. Crofts gives in his first chapter " A Sketch of Naval History, 1558-1898," and in his second an account of the "Foreign Possessions of Great Britain." The map exhibits a number of details which may be conveniently studied along with the letter- press,—naval stations, commercial routes, distances, sources of food supplies, and a host of other matters. We take a number of things as if they were as much laws of Nature as sunrise and sunset, summer and winter. It is good to be reminded that they depend largely on our own action.—Along with this volume we may appropriately mention Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, edited by the Secretary, Vol. III. (The Institute, Northumberland Avenue). Among the papers are "Western Australia, 1898," by the Hon. E. H. Wittenoom ; " Queensland's Progress," by Hon. Sir Horace Tozer ; "South Australia as a Federal Unit," by Hon. Dr. John A. Cockburn ; "Klondike," by Miss Flora Shaw, a singularly interesting account ; "The Native Races of South Africa," by Dr. A. P. Hillier ; and "The Sugar Industry of Mauritius," by James Forester Anderson. All these, it will be noticed, have a close relation to burning questions of the time. Sir Robert Giffen contributes a paper which, in a way, illustrates all the rest, "The Relative Growth of the Component Parts of the Empire," with copious statistics.
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