A First Year in Canterbury Settlement. By Samuel Butler. (Long-
mans.)-The preface to this little volume informs us that it is with the author's Mends, not with the author himself, that the responsibility of its publication rests. The letters and journals from which it is compiled were sent home for family circulation only by a young Cambridge man who has recently emigrated to New Zealand. We are glad to say that this is not one of the numerous cases in which family partiality has triumphed over sound literary judgment. Mr. Butler's sketches form a gift which is really worthy of the acceptance of the public. They contain nothing but an account of a long voyage, and of the early ex- periences of a sheep farmer in Now Zealand ; but their author has handled these common-place materials with so much liveliness and judgment as to produce a volume which is at once amusing and instructive to a very considerable degree. Mr. Butler communicates his experience in a remarkably straightforward and intelligible manner, and we should be puzzled to name a work which the intending emigrant might consult with greater advantage.
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