The Statesman's Year-Book. Edited by J. Scott Keltie, with the
assistance of J. P. A. Renwick. (Macmillan and Co. 10s. 6d,)— The principal additions to this year's issue—the thirty-seventh —concern the delimitation of European territories and "spheres of influence" in Africa and in the Pacific. Two maps illustrate the African partition, and a third that of Polynesia, while a fourth gives the arrangement made by the arbitrators in the Venezuela dispute. Our frontier is considerably advanced beyond the original " Schomburgk Line," but falls short of our extreme claim, which took in an enclave of some ten thousand square miles, a territory very thinly inhabited and probably of little value. The affairs which chiefly interest us just now hardly come within the scope of the volume, which relies mainly on official returns. The original, not the supplementary, Estimates for 1899.1900 are given.—The Royal Blue-Book (May Edition) contains Official, Parliamentary, Street, and Alphabetical Directories,—a convenient volume which has served the needs of many inquirers for now nearly eighty years.—Another manual, useful in its way, and now in a third edition, is Philip's Handy-Volume Atlas of London (G. Philip and Son, 5s.) Section I. contains a list of the chief public buildings ; Section II. exhibits the topography of the county of LOndon in fifty-five maps, and is followed by special maps of various places interesting to London, —Kew Gardens, e.g., Epping, and Windsor, and the Thames to Oxford; Section III. is a general index.
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