Messrs. Blackie and Son publish a "Series of Supplementary Readers
" which is intended to give English boys and girls some idea of their native country, its antiquities, industries, and so forth. The volume now before us is Kent (8d.) It is good, but it might have been better. The coloured map which faces p. 65, professing to give the "Roads and Railways " of the county, is not up to date. The South-Eastern and Chatham line which runs from Swanley, by Eynsford, Wrotham, dre., to Maidstone, Ashford, and Folkestone, is inadequately marked. It is a "main line" as much as that which runs by Chatham to Canterbury and Dover. In the description of the "Pilgrims' Road" space might have been found for the prehistoric use of this way, when the Cornish tin was carried along it to the nearest point for transmission to Continental Europe.—Of another educational book from the same publishers we can speak with unmixed praise. This is An Intro- duction to Good Poetry, by E. F. Davidson, M.A. (1s. 6d.) The method followed is not unlike that which we described in our review of "Bible Teaching." Mr. Davidson classifies the poems which he quotes. First comes the section of "Childhood," with four poems: " Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," by E. Field ; two from R. L. Stevenson, "Foreign Lands" and "The Land of Counterpane " ; and extracts from George Eliot's "Brother and Sister." "What School Teaches" is represented by Mr. Newbolt's noble " Play up! play up ! and play the game !" (Vital Lasnpada). Section III., "Beauties from Nature," gives us Shelley's " Skylark" and Wordsworth's " Daffodils," with five others, of which three are from Shelley. Then we have in succession " Patriotism," " Lessons and Experiences of Life," and " Old Age and Death," with six, nine, and four poems respectively, the poets represented being Shakespeare (two), Browning (four), Tennyson (five), A. H. Clough (two), Milton, Burns, M. Arnold, Campbell, and Kipling contributing one each. Some notes are supplied. The book, as a whole, is a most praiseworthy effort to support the literary aide of school-teaching.—A third educational volume belongs to "Nature's Doorstep Series" (The Country Press, 3s. net), The Green Gateway, by Francis Geo. Heath. This volume will be best used for private teaching. In the hands of an intelligent person who really cares for the subject, and takes it up sympathetically, it ought to be most useful. To the child whose eyes have been
opened to see what Mr. Heath teaches him to see and to imagine— as when the presence of chalk is made to remind him that he is standing on what was once a sea-bottom—the world will seem a different place.
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