Place-Names in Strathbogie. By James Macdonald, F.S.A. (D. Wyllie, Aberdeen.)—Ever
since the publication of " Pickwick," it has been a fashion to sneer at provincial archteological and natural-history societies. There is little doubt, however, that they do good work of various kinds in a quiet way, and of this fact such a volume as the present supplies adequate evidence. The very copious " Notes " which it contains, originally appeared in the " Proceedings of the Huntly Field Club." They deal with the place-names of Strathbogie, a region in the North of Scotland, best known, perhaps, for the part it played immediately before the Disruption of 184-3, but indirectly they give both the history and the scientific evolution of the region. We have never seen a better account than Mr. Macdonald's of the remarkable vitrified forts on the bill bearing the curious name of Tap o' Noth, the view from which includes all the higher hills of the Grampians on Deeside, the Cairngorm Mountains, the higher hills on the Avon and Spey, a. wide range of the low country, the coast of Caithness, the Moray Firth, and a considerable extent of the Aberdeenshire coast. The accounts given, by way of digression, of several of the Scotch families in the North, such as the Gordons and the Bar- clays, are very interesting. Altogether, this is as authoritative a book of its class as any that has recently been published, and it is as readable and modert as it is authoritative.
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