living creatures.

Their odor, their lurking habits by daylight and their swift rush when disturbed, the knowledge that by night they swarm over everything, leaving no spot uncontaminated, fouling food and dishes, destroying every animal and vegetable substance they can reach, and the horrible prodigy that some of them (the males) can fly, should secure for them the resolute hatred of mankind. In this country they are alien intruders. The common "blackbeetle" came from the East and when Gilbert White wrote was still "an unusual insect" at Selborne. The larger and browner American cockroach is probably a later immigrant; it is curiously local in its distribution in England, but it has established itself in the London Zoological Gardens, in certain London squares and City warehouses. The greater cleanliness of modern houses has done something to subdue the cockroach, but, on the other hand, the increased use of steam heating has been in its favor. It shuns cold, and formerly, although it might range through a house on foraging expeditions, its headquarters were the kitchen. Now the pipes that traverse a house from floor to floor, taking hot water to the bedrooms and serving radiators, form highways for it, and provide endless inaccessible lurking and breeding places.

Those that have the resolution to examine cockroaches have ascertained that they harbor an amazing number of parasites, some of them common to man, and there can be no doubt that their presence in a house makes the isolation of a sickroom impossible and undoes the best precautions against the contamination of food and drink by microbes. Fortunately there are many ways of killing them off. I may give one which I have found completely successful. Dissolve borax in hot water until it will absorb no more;

add to the solution an equal quantity of turpentine, and then, with a housepainter's brush, coat every nook and cranny with the mixture, covering the hot-water pipes, the angles between the skirting-boards and the floor, the interior of cupboards, the backs of wooden shelves, the door-posts where the doors are hinged, and so forth. Next morning the moribund insects will be found littering the floor and may be swept up and destroyed. Of course, in time they will creep into the house again, coming with the linen from the laundry, in the baker's basket, or from next door. But they can be kept down, and if there were a united anti-cockroach campaign in London they could be practically exterminated, to the great advantage, I do not doubt, of our health. Here in the Zoological Gardens, where in many of the houses the system of heating and the abundant presence of scraps of food make the conditions ideal for cockroaches, it has been found quite easy to clear them out of a particular house, and to keep them out. But there is a conflict of interest; cockroaches are greedily eaten by a great many birds and reptiles and by some mammals, and I am assured by practical experts-although I don't agree that they form a suitable food.

Bluebottles and houseflies are a domestic plague possibly less annoying but at least as dangerous as cockroaches. To my mind they are incomparably more repulsive than mosquitos. They are not bloodsuckers, coveting the clean juices of the body, but are attracted by the odors of filth and corruption, and their attentions are an insult and a degradation. Their direct danger to human health has been proved beyond all doubt. It will be remembered that Darwin raised no less than eighty-two plants from seeds accidentally present in a lump of earth adhering to the leg of a partridge.

Similarly, flies have been made to crawl over plates of sterilized nutritive media, prepared by bacteriologists, and on subsequent cultivation each footprint has given rise to colonies of microbes. The common moulds and bacteria that cause putrefaction, the germs of many fevers, of the enteric troubles of children, of forms of ophthalmia and of many parasitic skin diseases are certainly carried by houseflies.

By concerted action in great towns it would be possible and not very difficult practically to exterminate bluebottles and to reduce houseflies to an almost harmless remnant. Saucers of water to which have been added a few drops of formalin very soon clear rooms of flies. But the most certain method is to attack them in their breeding haunts. Bluebottles deposit their eggs The Saturday Review.

in decaying animal matter, on which the larvæ feed, and their extermination is no more than a question of efficient scavengering, the immediate destruction of fly-blown material, and the prevention of the access of the adults to animal substances. Houseflies breed chiefly in stable-manure, and already the replacement of horse traffic by motor traffic is doing much to reduce their numbers. The diseases of the tropics make a dramatic appeal to us, and we are disposed to regard the familiar scourges of our own country as inevitable. But the extermination of the insect pests of our own houses is as important and as practicable as the campaign against mosquitos in Panama, and would lower the death-rate and increase the comfort and happiness of the population.

P. Chalmers Mitchell.

An edition de luxe of Chaucer's translation from the French of the famous Romaunt of the Rose is just being issued by Henry Holt & Co. The features of this book are the twenty illustrations reproduced in facsimile of the original water-color drawings by Keith Henderson and Norman Wilkinson of Four Oaks, England.

Probably few books of travel and description are so interesting after all as those which describe our native land. Especially is this the case when that land is described through the unprejudiced eyes of an observant outsider, such as the Abbé Félix Klein of Paris. Father Klein is already well known as an impartial student of America and American affairs. His latest book is "America of To-morrow," of which A. C. McClurg & Co. will publish the authorized translation immediately.

Of the volume on "Evolution" in the Home University Library Professor Patrick Geddes of St. Andrews University and Prof. J. Arthur Thomson of Aberdeen University are joint authors. This is not the first time that they have collaborated in the work of explaining and interpreting the theory of evolution, for they wrote jointly "The Evolution of Sex," a work of recognized importance in this field of investigation. In the present volume the word evolution is used in no narrow sense. is defined as changing order and orderly change, and this everywhere, in nature organic and inorganic, in individual and in social life. This is a large subject to attempt to treat within the narrow limits of 250 pages, but the authors succeed not only in illuminating the subject but in stimualting the reader to a desire for fuller investigation. The style in which the book is written is

It

lucid and forcible without being in the least condescending. This last is a quality which will be appreciated by readers who weary of men of science in patronizing moods. Henry Holt & Co.

They

The series of brief lay sermons, if they may be so described, which are contained in Louis Howland's little volume "Day Unto Day" make a strong appeal by their candor, their reverence, and their freedom from denominational narrowness. Written by a layman originally for publication in a secular journal, their message is not to theologians but to the man in the street. To use a homely and old-fashioned word, they are in the highest degree sensible. They are well reasoned and clearly and forcibly expressed. discuss subjects new and old,-subjects as old as the Advent message and the problem of Prayer, and subjects as new as Dr. Eliot's Religion, Meredith's Idea of God, and the mediumistic vagaries of Sir Oliver Lodge; and always they are reverent, sincere and helpful. Many are the volumes bearing the names of eminent theologians or doctors of divinity upon their title pages which are less inspiring, less compelling in their presentation of religious truth than this modest little book. Bobbs-Merrill Co.

"Characteristics of Existing Glaciers," by William Herbert Hobbs, is a very instructive work on the history, development and action of glaciers. These great masses of moving ice are treated under three main divisions: mountain, arctic and antarctic glaciers. The first part contains a general discussion of glacial formations, depicting in a clear and concise way the cycle of glacial life. The second part takes up and explains inland ice formations in the arctic regions. The third part treats in a similar manner the great ice masses of the antarctic regions.

Professor Hobbs, who holds the Chair of Geology in the University of Michigan, comes to the interesting conclusion after a detailed discussion of glacial theories and their bearing on "lateral migration," that "protection from weathering on the cirque floor, combined with effective weathering at the base of the cirque wall" is the cause of such migrations. Although the book is a technical treatise, it is readily intelligible to the general reader. It is exceptionally well illustrated with thirty-four full-page plates, and nearly one hundred and fifty pictures scattered through the text. The Macmillan Co.

Hearty, wholesome, invigorating, decidedly out of the common and thoroughly worth while is "The Brassbounder," in which are described “seventeen months of apprenticeship, between the masts of a starvation Scotch barque, in the roughest of sea-faring, on the long voyage, the solitary track leading westward around the Horn." Many of these sketches appeared for the first time in the "Glasgow News," and the editor of that paper will feel himself repaid for the encouragement which led to their publication in book form as the name of their writer, David W. Bone, becomes familiar to a wider circle of appreciative readers. Mr. Bone's style is admirably adapted to his material. He writes with enthusiasm, and yet sensibly, shrewdly, and with a touch of humor that might be Mr. W. W. Jacob's own. The narrative of the voyage is of intense interest, and long before its end the motley group on board the "Florence" have become real people the Kid; Cockney Hicks; Dutch John: Collins, the Nigger, with his Gælic from Pictou; John Lewis, the brawny Welshman; Wee Laughlin, discontented and truculent; Old Martin, that great upholder of the rights of the fo'cas'le, and the Old Man himself,

ever the Scotchman looking after his owners' interest. E. P. Dutton & Co.

A curious lack of attention to the Pacific Slope on the part of historians, is brought to mind through the publication of a book by Irving Berdine Richman called "California Under Spain and Mexico." As the writer says in the preface, it is a book for the general reader and the special student. It portrays in an interesting manner the early history of California under Spanish rule, the transition, and the stormy years under Mexican control. This whole period covers more than three centuries, from 1535 to 1847. The greater portion of the material presented in this book previously existed only in manuscript form, and the student of early American history is indebted to Mr. Richman for his exhaustive researches at Madrid, Seville, Mexico City, and the State Library in California. After indicating the general physiography of California, Mr. Richman enters directly upon his historical narrative, depicting the early Galleon trade on the Pacific, the wars, expeditions, founding of San Francisco (1775-1776) to the final control by the United States. The student of history will find much of value in the new facts brought out bearing on the career of John C. Fremont. The book is illustrated with colored plates and many maps, some of which have never before been in print. This work, prepared by a man who has already made several valuable contributions to the history of this country, must stand as the first authoritative history of California. It is published by Houghton Mifflin Co.

William J. Locke's latest novel, "The Glory of Clementina," is full of that whimsical fancy and mellow humor

which give such unfailing delight to his wide circle of readers, and he has generously provided two leading characters, either one of which would make the fortune of an ordinary story. Clementina herself is a London portrait-painter of Continental reputation, shrewd, energetic, capable and generous-hearted, but embittered by a tragedy in her youth, utterly disdainful of the usual feminine graces and conventions, and at thirty-five a brusque, plain and unattractive woman. Bound to her at first by a slender tie of kinship and by their common interest in his nephew Tommy-a happy-go-lucky young artist -and later by their joint guardianship of a little orphan girl, is Dr. Ephraim Quixtus, president of the London Anthropological Society, a scholar and a gentleman, but pathetically lacking in practical ability. Cheated by his confidential clerk, disinherited with contempt by his cynical old uncle, confronted with evidence of the unfaithfulness of his dead wife, Quixtus resolves to have his revenge on the world by turning villain himself. The plot of the story follows his efforts and their inevitable failure, and reveals, in the final chapters, one of the most lovable personalities of recent fiction. Many minor characters are cleverly portrayed; Tommy's romance, personally conducted by Clementina from a touring-car in France, is a pretty incident; and the dinner-table at which the transformed Clementina presides-"a symphony in ambergris, gold and black" is one of those details that memory lingers over. Mr. Locke's work is thoroughly seasoned, and its brilliancy is spontaneous and yet restrained-agreeably free from the crude effects so often forced by writers of inferior skill and taste. John Lane Co.