REFERENCE BOOKS.
The Municipal Year Book. Edited by Robert Donald. (Edward Lloyd. 10s. 6d. net.)—We have again to record the appearance of this most useful and interesting volume. It tells us all about the finances of various localities, about municipal trading and its results, the disposal of sewage, and various other matters too numerous to specify. Possibly, as we have remarked before, the most interesting pages to the general reader are 889-90. The figures, however, do not show with absolute certainty the actual incidence of local taxation. Norwich, for instance, shows a total of 102. 3d., but then it is understood that the assessments in Norwich are low. Oxford is low with 4s. 3d., but then the circum- stances of Oxford are peculiar. The assessment, as compared with the area and population, would naturally be high, and the city, which has not forgotten the penalties exacted for the St. Scholastica outrage, does its best to keep up the standard.— Official Year-Book of the Church of England. (S.P.C.K. 3s.)— We find in this, the seventy-ninth appearance of the Year-Book the customary array of facts and figures. Here are some of them : Voluntary offerings for all objects in 1910 amounted to £1,912,733. The net income of 12,681 benefices was about half this sum. The Assistant Clergy received from all sources £1,083,294. Between six and seven hundred deacons were or- dained. Church accommodation of all kinds amounted to 7,325,148 seats, of which about five-sixths were free. An appendix gives some statistics of the Church in Wales. The Nonconformist total of communicants is 550,280, and Church of England 193,081. We cannot help saying that these figures are somewhat amazing. Deducting children of three years and under from the total population, we get a result that in Wales there are two communicants in every five persons. The deduction should be really of children under fourteen.—With this may be mentioned The London Diocese Book. (Same publishers. Is. 6d.)—The Co-operative Wholesale Societies' Annual. (1, Balloon Street, Man- chester.)—The "sales," we see, have risen from £2,333,523 in 1862 to £113,090,337 in 1908; the net profits for this last year were over ten millions, of which about a twelfth were assigned to educational objects.
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