This affords the best clue to his book to those who know the writer’s quickness, freshness, independence, force, and penetration. The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist. Adventures and Observations in Norway, Sweden and Russia. By J. M. Buckley, LL. D. 72 illustrations, 376 pages. $3. D. Lothrop Company, Boston. Just short of the luxurious in paper, pictures and print. * * * * * The writer best equipped for such a task has put into one illustrated book a brief account of every American voyage for polar exploration, including one to the south almost forgotten. American Explorations in the Ice Zones. By Professor J. E. Nourse, U. S. N. 10 maps, 120 illustrations, 624 pages. Cloth, $3, gilt edges $3.50, half-calf $6 D. Lothrop Company, Boston. Not written especially for boys; but they claim it. The wife of a U. S. lighthouse inspector, Mary Bradford Crowninshield, writes the story of a tour of inspection along the coast of Maine with two boys on board—for other boys of course. A most instructive as well as delightful excursion. The boys go up the towers and study the lamps and lanterns and all the devices by which a light in the night is made to tell the wary sailor the coast he is on; and so does the reader. Stories of wrecks and rescues beguile the waiting times. There are no waiting times in the story. All Among the Lighthouses, or Cruise of the Goldenrod. By Mary Bradford Crowninshield. 32 illustrations, 392 pages. $2.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston. There’s a vast amount of coast-lore besides. * * * * * Mr. Grant Allen, who knows almost as much as anybody, has been making a book of twenty-eight separate parts, and says of it: “These little essays are mostly endeavors to put some of the latest results of science in simple, clear and intelligible language.” Now that is exactly what nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of us want, if it isn’t dry. And it isn’t dry. Few of those who have the wonderful knowledge of what is going on in the learned world have the gift of popular explanation—the gift of telling of it. Mr. Allen has that gift; the knowledge, the teaching grace, the popular faculty. Common Sense Science. By Grant Allen. 318 pages. $1.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston. By no means a list of new-found facts; but the bearings of them on common subjects. We don’t go on talking as if the earth were the centre of things, as if Galileo never lived. Huxley and Spencer have got to be heard. Shall we wait two hundred and fifty years? The book is simply an easy means of intelligence. * * * * * There is nothing more dreary than chemistry taught as it used to be taught to beginners. There is nothing brighter and fuller of keen delight than chemistry taught as it can be taught to little children even.