Mr. _James G. Needham_ has furnished, in _Outdoor Studies_ (American Book Company), one of the fullest and most systematic guides or "reading books," as he calls this one, for Nature study that we have seen. Recognizing that there is no lack, in numbers, of books offering object lessons, etc., for children of the earlier years intervening between the primary and the high school, he has prepared this book to supply for the later years of that period "a few lessons of greater continuity, calling for more persistence of observation and introducing a few of the simpler of our modern conceptions of Nature at large." The lessons presuppose some years of experience of life and some previous training in observation; they are given simply for the sake of the interest and educative value of the facts and phenomena of Nature which they set forth; and they have been written more for the boys and girls than for the teachers. The things described--birds, insects, plants, etc.--are such as can be seen anywhere. Mr. Needham tells how to study them and learn what they mean. In _Commissioner Hume, a Story of New York Schools_, a sequel to Roderick Hume, the Story of a New York Teacher, Mr. _C. W. Bardeen_ has undertaken to give a picture of rural New York schools, or rather of the administration of school affairs by commissioners as they were in 1875, and he declares it to be accurate. He represents, however, that the general tone of the commissioners has vastly changed in the period that has intervened since then, and the conditions described in the volume no longer prevail. The book is offered, therefore, as a contribution to educational history. (Published by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.)