tly, revised; in fact, the author acknowledges that he considered the task of rewriting it a hopeless one, and adopted in preference, as a more feasible plan, "in adding the new matter to leave the history as previously completed, and under the head of 'addenda' to proceed with the subsequent statements." In several instances the "addenda" are far longer than the history to which they are attached. Thus, the report has come to answer, with unusual accuracy, to the author's own description of it as resembling "one of those vast, rambling, mediæval structures to which succeeding ages have builded additions as the needs or tastes of new generations impelled." It contains a great deal of valuable matter, that could have been put, in vastly better shape, in a fraction of the space the present volume occupies. Then we should have had a compact, manageable book, written to the point, which publishers would have competed for the privilege of putting on, the market. As it is, it is a striking re-enforcement of our argument against the Government going into the publishing business.
Annual Report on the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for 1885. Middletown. Pp. 139.
The analysis of commercial fertilizers and work connected with the collection, examination, and valuation of samples have occupied the larger part of the time of the station's working force. One hundred and thirty-nine brands of fertilizers were legally sold in the State during the rear, and one hundred and seventeen other analyses of fertilizers of various kinds were made. Other analyses or tests were made of feeding-stuffs, seeds, milk, well-and spring-water, and soils, and cases of suspected poisoning of animals were inquired into. Four bulletins were published, and sent to the post-offices for distribution to agricultural societies and clubs, to newspapers, and, on application, to private addresses; and hektograph copies of analyses are liberally sent out as soon as the analyses are finished.
Old School Days. By Amanda B. Harris. Chicago and Boston: Interstate Publishing Company. Pp. 109, with Plates. Price, 60 cents.
This is a vivid reproduction, from memory, of days and scenes and customs that have passed away, and live only in the traditions of those who are now fathers and mothers. It brings before us the New England country school-house of forty or fifty years ago, with the children plainly dressed, and most of them barefooted. The story can not fail to be pleasing to those who would recall the days when they were children, and to those who would enjoy a representation of what their parents did and saw in the school.
The Great Conspiracy; its Origin and History. By John A. Logan. New York: A. E. Hart & Co. Pp. 810.
This book will attract attention on account of the author's prominence in the politics of the day, and will particularly interest those who recollect his activity as a soldier of the Union during the war of the rebellion. In preparing the book it has been his aim, he says, "to present in it, with historical accuracy, authentic facts; to be fair and impartial in grouping them; and to be true and just in the conclusions necessarily drawn from them. While thus striving to be accurate, fair, and just, he has not thought it his duty to mince words, nor to refrain from 'calling things by their right names'; neither has he sought to curry favor, in any quarter, by fulsome adulation on the one side, nor undue denunciation on the other, either of the living or of the dead"; in treating the subject, "he has conscientiously dealt with it, throughout, in the clear and penetrating light of the voluminous records so readily accessible at the seat of our national government. So far as was practicable, he has endeavored to allow the chief characters in that conspiracy, as well as the Union leaders,. . . to speak for themselves, and thus, while securing their own proper places in history, by a process of self-adjustment, as it were, themselves to write down that history in their own language." Nevertheless, the style of the book is warm; and many of the th