times, by way of the fan-lights over the doors in the class rooms, odors arising from the latrines in the basement, which are emptied only once or twice a week.” In this model school-house only from thirty-three to forty-one cubic feet of air are allowed to each child, while nature vigorously clamors for at least eight hundred feet in the twenty-four hours. In the second report read by Dr. R. I. O’Sullivan we are invited to contemplate a picture which but faintly reveals the evil effects that the early overcrowding exercises in after-days over the adult population: “Look around us in public assemblies, and see in those scarcely entering middle life the evidence of physical decline, the prematurely bald and gray, the facial muscles photographing the wearied brain and overtaxed nervous system.” Few can fail to realize, on due reflection, how much of the terrible truth of this picture is attributable to the bad condition of our school-houses. The conclusion is plain that the judgment of the trained sanitarian is of vital importance in the erection of school buildings, and that, until the necessity of his sage interposition is recognized by the Department of Public Instruction, diseases, the result of early confinement in close and crowded schools, which are quite preventible, will continue to prevail among us. GOD THE TEACHER OF MANKIND: A plain, comprehensive explanation of Christian Doctrine. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benziger Bros. 1877. CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, for Academies and High Schools. With the approbation of the Most Rev. J. Roosevelt Bayley, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Intermediate No. III. Benziger Bros. 1877. This is a most useful and comprehensive book, clear and definite in its plan, popular and interesting in its style. It is divided into two parts. Part I. deals with “The Enemies of the Church” from the beginning down to our own times. These enemies Father Müller sets down in the order of time as “Heathenism,” “Heresy,” and “Freemasonry.” Part II. is occupied with showing what in these days of vague beliefs and religious indifferentism it is most important to show—namely, that God himself is the teacher of mankind, and therefore that his voice must be listened to and obeyed. The church is the voice of God on earth; consequently, the everlasting object of the enemies of God is to silence and destroy the church. These avowed enemies were in the old days the heathen; later on the heretics. A deadlier foe than either, and combining the evil elements of both, the author points out to-day as Freemasons, the term covering, of course, all forms of secret oath-bound societies.