Most indefinite ideas exist among even very well informed people concerning the Soudan and its tribes. What is the Soudan? Who people it? What does England want of it? Such questions are worrying many heads, and there has been a general search for information. A very timely book to those interested, is “The Wild Tribes of the Soudan.”[B] The author, so late as December, 1881, started on a trip of exploration and sport through the Basé country—a small part, it is true, of the Soudan, but the people, customs and country serve as reliable examples. The experiences of this company of sportsmen with the people, their adventures and dangers, furnish us with much useful information about a people in whom we are all just now interested. The book is furnished with excellent maps. The erudition embraced in Dr. Winchell’s digest[C] of Cosmical Science exhausts the contributions of the French, German and English languages, and is simply enormous. As the author _con amore_ has made this subject the study of an average lifetime, his personal contributions of original thought constitute a large part of the book. It is written in a calm, judicial spirit and incisive style, and increases in strength and interest to the close. The universe of matter is the field of observation, and starting with the principles which are worked out before our eyes on this planet, the mechanism of the solar system is subjected to analysis in regard to the order of its structure and final destiny. He then passes into the stellar universe, and finds evidence that the same kinds of substances are there, subject to the same laws, and tending to the same results. The speculative reasoning of the volume of course covers much space, but the trustworthy information obtained is all that could be expected; in fact, all that is known to science. We know of no other book which gives to the mind so clear a view of the incomparable vastness of the universe, and the _rationale_ of its existing as does this. The conclusion reached is, that the surface of our moon is made up mostly of the craters, cinders, and lava-beds of spent volcanoes. All the other planets, the sun included, are tending in the same direction and destiny. In the stellar world other systems of sun and planets have reached this goal of desolation; others are on the way, and new systems, originating in nebulæ, are taking on form and order. When a cycle is once completed by a system its career is ended forever and ever. On the whole, this is one of the most instructive and fascinating volumes we have read for a long time.