Fife, Pictorial and Historical. By A. H. Millar, F.S.A.Scot. 2
vols. (A. Westwood and Son, Cupar-Fife.)—"The Kingdom of Fife" seems to have a singular fascination for many minds,—a fascination for which St. Andrews, with its historical and other associations, is largely, though not exclusively, accountable. It is this attraction, no doubt, that accounts for so many books—most of them good books too—dealing with Fife in different aspects, which have been published in recent years. And now we have from Mr. A. H. Millar these two volumes which in a way sum up, and include, though they in no sense supersede, the books which have gone before them. He deals exhaustively—alike from the historical, the geographical, and the industrial point of view—with every parish in the county, including certain parishes, such as Culross and Tulliallan, which, under the last Redistribution Scheme, were taken from Perthshire and added to Fife. The book is a dictionary of the county, in fact, and as such ought to be welcomed by the men of Fife, who have the reputation of being more clannish than the natives of any other county in Scotland. Besides, the history of Scotland, as a whole, is bound up with that of so many parishes in Fife—that of Falkland, for example—that the careful, conscientious, and patriotic historian of the future will find here a great deal of material that is, or ought to be, of the utmost value to him. If, indeed, every county in Great Britain were dealt with as Mr. Millar has dealt with Fife, we ought to be within measurable distance of a perfect history of the country. Too much praise, indeed, can hardly be bestowed upon Mr. Millar. His industry is enormous ; he writes simply and carefully ; and he has prefixed to the body of his work essays by specialists on the geology, Ice., of the " Kingdom." The only weak point about these volumes is the illustrations. They are numerous, but they have rather a poor—what the Scotch them- selves call a " shilpit "—look.
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