from this tendency on the part of Professor Seeley, the lectures are full of wise maxims and suggestive thoughts, and cannot fail to interest and instruct the historical student. ⁂ The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge has added to its series called ‘The People’s Library’ a most instructive little volume entitled _A Chapter of Science; or, What is the Law of Nature?_ It consists of six lectures which were delivered to working-men by Mr J. Stuart, Professor of Mechanics, Cambridge. The object of the lecturer was to present an example of inductive reasoning, and to familiarise his hearers to some extent with the principles of scientific inquiry; and he has succeeded in his object in a remarkable degree. We do not know any book of the same extent which so fully places before the unscientific reader, or before the reader who has gathered many facts of science without apprehending their bearing upon each other, the principles which should guide him in the endeavour to estimate and arrange these facts correctly. He reminds his hearers that what science itself has to teach us consists not so much in facts, as in those lessons and deductions which can be drawn from facts, and which can be justly apprehended only by a knowledge of such facts. ‘Those,’ he aptly says, ‘whose knowledge of science has furnished them with only an encyclopædia of facts, are like men who try to warm themselves before coals which have not yet been lighted. Those who are furnished only with the deductions of science are like men who may have a lighted match, but have not the material to construct a fire. That match soon burns away uselessly.’ We cannot conceive of any one reading this book, even with only an average degree of attention and only a trifling modicum of scientific knowledge, and not gleaning from it a clearer apprehension of the facts of science and the inductions to be made from these facts. ⁂ A beautiful volume comes to us from the pen of an occasional contributor to this _Journal_, Dr Gordon Stables. It is entitled _Aileen Aroon_ (London: S. W. Partridge & Co.), and consists of tales of faithful friends and favourites among the lower animals. The chief story of the book, and that which gives it its title, is concerning a noble Newfoundland dog called ‘Aileen Aroon;’ but interwoven with it are numerous stories of all kinds of domestic pets—dogs, monkeys, sheep, squirrels, birds of various kinds, and even that much-abused creature the donkey. Dr Stables, as our readers cannot fail to have observed, possesses a very happy style of narration; and his never-failing sympathy with animal-life gives to his several pictures a depth and truth of colouring such as one but rarely meets with in this department of anecdotal literature. A better present could not be put into the hands of a boy or girl who loves animals, than this handsome volume about _Aileen Aroon_ and her many friends. ⁂