WORKS OF REFERENCE.
The fifty-third issue of " Crockford " seems to be, wherever tested, as accurate and comprehensive as ever, and we can suggest no improvement or addition. The editor's preface, too, contains the judicious and racy remarks which we expect to find there. He is sorely perturbed about the steady decline in the number of candidates for ordination : there are barely half as many as there were before the War. He attributes this in no small degree to "the impoverishment of the pro- fessional class." He describes the Isle of Man as " the Parson's Paradise" because the Tithe Act of 1918 does not apply to the island and the clergy therefore receive the true value of the tithe under the compromise of 1834. He assures an anxious correspondent that the Bishop of Zanzibar has not instituted a female priesthood : the cathedral clergy of Zanzibar, to whose names " Miss " was appended in the last edition, were in fact Missionaries and not Misses.
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