VILLAGE DOMESDAYS.
A notable gathering of the Community Councils and those they represent takes place this week at Cambridge, and will, I hope, emphasize a local achievement on which Lincoln- shire is to be congratulated. The Lindsey department of that spacious county has just produced a booklet urging the making of local Domesday books and outlining the right and proper method. The first and perhaps best of these local Domesdays is to the credit of Oxfordshire ; and a good deal of authentic history has been unearthed (in the literal sense) and preserved, to the intense interest of the children and their teachers who have been especially active in this lively research work. What is the good of living in a land " fathoms deep in history," as was said of Pevensey, if we do not excavate ? Historians, like farmers, should know that the " subsoiler " is a great cultivator, and those who would proceed with the work will find ideas and stimulus in Local History : its Interest and Value, issued by the Lindsey Rural Community Council from St. Peter's Chambers, Silver Street, Lincoln. Another little but larger book which may be said to establish the technique of a welcome activity is to the credit of a small group of zoologists of London University. They have produced an historical record of society's effort to defend animals against unnecessary cruelty ; and their inquests cover many European countries as well as the United States and Canada. This Animal Year Book (University of London Press, 2s. 6d.) is written objectively, without any excesses of sentiment, and covers most of the ground from the records of humane slaughter to sport.
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