A conspicuous example of the faults of this class of story is found in "Sylvia in flowerland," by Linda Gardner. The heroine is introduced as a high-school girl, well-advanced in Latin and mathematics, and amply able to supplement very largely the information which the flowers give her about themselves. Linda strolls into the fields and is told all sorts of facts about the habits of plants by the flowers. The story where the author forgets to interject puns is interestingly told, certainly enough so to attract a girl of fourteen, who has any fondness for flowers. Besides the numerous puns, such glaring sentences as the following, condemn it. "I don't know who you mean." "Why it is a nasty nettle"! said Sylvia. "Nasty, yourself," ejaculated the nettle sharply, "why do you come shoving against me?" McCook's "Old farm fairies," gives what Mrs. Malaprop calls "a supercilious knowledge" in its attempt to interest children in insect life, by introducing different insects in the form of pixies, brownies and fairies. While it has not the faults of "Sylvia in flowerland," the information is mainly crowded into footnotes and appendices, which as a rule are carefully avoided by children. Mabel Osgood Wright's "Tommy Anne" and "Wabeno" are more successful; but the same amount of energy spent in making the facts of nature interesting in themselves would be preferable. While not assuming an absolute censorship in this department, the principle of natural selection may be applied in discarding such books as are characterized by the faults here cited, that we may do our share towards discouraging a taste for facetiousness, flippancy and poor style in literature. For while these modern, sham, soulless fairy tales soon lose themselves in the overwhelming mass of printed matter, in their brief existence they have time to accomplish considerable harm. Far better to encourage re-reading the imperishable tales, than to gratify an insatiable desire for more. Did not we ourselves again and again shed fresh tears over Cinderella's hard fate, or gasp with bated breath while watching with Sister Ann for that distant speck on the horizon? If children are different to-day, it is partly because we are helping to make them so. ABBY L. SARGENT, _Medford_ (_Mass._) _Public Library_. _III. SCIENCE FOR CHILDREN._ In the selection of books for children's libraries it is necessary to understand the difference between the aims and methods of the old education and the new.