_Le Devoir_ gives some interesting information about the wonderful stones of Saffah, now on exhibition in the Asia Minor department of the Museum of the Louvre. This department has lately been reopened to the public, after being closed six months for internal improvements. Visitors pass before the cases containing these ordinary-looking cobblestones, and wonder why they should be there instead of in the street, where they seem to belong. But these ordinary-looking stones are, in the eyes of scholars, among the most precious objects of history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan, Ganneau, De Vogue, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the writing on them, for the character resembles none that has yet been deciphered. They will not, however, abandon the task, for antiquaries are Patience personified; and we shall one day know the history, language, manners and customs of a race whose very existence up to the present time has not even been suspected. M. H. FOOTNOTES: [B] The published statistics of the Russian press are manifestly untrustworthy; but the post-office returns of St. Petersburg show that 82,000 copies of daily and 40,000 of weekly papers, with 50,000 copies of monthly periodicals, are yearly sent to the provinces. The largest circulation (26,000) belongs to M. Katkoff's _Moscow Gazette_ (_Moskovskiya Vedomosti_). Besides the native journals, 17 German papers, 5 French, 4 Polish, 2 Tartar and 1 Hebrew are published in Russia. Of English papers, the _Manchester Guardian_, thanks to the number of Lancashire workmen in the interior, has the widest circulation: the _Times_ comes second, the _Illustrated London News_ third. LITERATURE OF THE DAY. The Atlantic Islands as Resorts of Health and Pleasure. By S. G. W. Benjamin. New York: Harper & Brothers.