Louis Wain's Annual. (George Allen and Sons. ls. net.)—Cats are
of course the chief feature of the Annual—some of them very highly connected cats—but the human element is allowed a place, and is made attractive. A very pleasant volume, and certainly well worth the money. Half-Holidays with Animals, by Beatrice Thompson (Gay and Hancock, 6s.), is a really serious book on its subject, quite entertaining, but also instructive. Any one who will read it with ordinary care will assuredly end with much more knowledge than he began with,—it is a good idea to give the scientific after the popular names in the index. And the creatures are cleverly pictured. Miss Thompson has illustrated her own book, and done it well. We do not know that any of the animals quite come up to the " carthorse " which serves as a frontispiece, but they are distinctly good.—Animals of the comic kind figure in Old King Cole, by G F. Hill, with Illustra- tions by L. Leslie Brooke (F. Warne and Co., 2s. 6d.) "Other very Natural Histories " about dinosaurs, dodos, crocodiles are included in the volume, and amusingly illustrated.