The Age of Mahogany. By Percy Macquoid. (Lawrence and Ballen.
42s. net.)—This is part of Mr. Macquoid's great "History of English Furniture." Mahogany began, ho tells us, to supersede walnut and oak, less fashionable in those days than walnut, about 1720. Very fine work was done in this material, as is shown by the abundant illustrations with which Mr. Macquoid's very interesting text is furnished. " Our fine mahogany furniture of the eighteenth century," he writes, summing up the matter, "is essentially connected with the English, for little or none of its construction was borrowed from abroad, and it holds a unique and unassailable position in the history of European furniture." In the last century it was, in a measure, dispossessed by oak. Oak we have no wish to disparage, but it is certainly in some respects inferior to its rival. This, again, varies in quality ; naturally the older specimens are superior in grain and colour.
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