We have received two volumes of a new series of
educational books, " Seeley's First Lesson Books" (Seeley and Co.) These are The Starry Skies, by Agnes Giberne, and The Great Globe, by A. Seeley. Miss Giberne is an expert in making astronomy in- telligible and interesting to readers not possessed of any technical knowledge. In this book she has had to condescend, so to speak, more than has ever been necessary before, but she has done it very well. About half the space is given to the Earth, Sun, and Moon, and the phenomena of these are lucidly explained, the explanation being helped by excellent illustrations. We do not know why the chapter on "eclipses" follows, instead of preceding, the account of the planets. (In this latter, " after Venus cornea a wide space in the heavens," &c., should surely have been written " after Mars," &c.) The account of the Solar System is concluded by chapters on "Comets" and "Meteors," A lesson on "Sizes and Distances" serves as a useful introduction to chapters on the "Stars," chapters which are, perhaps, the best in the book. Miss Seeley has had a more difficult subject. Geography without details is inevitably tedious, and details are impossible when you have to get the ' great globe" into two hundred and forty loosely printed pages. The bare names bear too great a proportion here to the amount of the whole. A well-informed teacher, indeed, may make the book useful as a text for illustrations to be found elsewhere. What is meant by saying of the Transvaal that " it belongs to the natives, and they govern it "P
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