Physical Geography for Schools and General Readers. By M. F.
Maury, LL.D., Commander in the Navy of the Confederate States of America. (Longman and Co.)—We presume this very clear little elementary treatise is one of the results of Commander Maury's enforced professional inactivity. It is admirably adapted to the pur- poses for which it is intended, and children can hardly approach the subject more easily and pleasantly. There are often very acute emarks to be found in it as to the effect of the physical conformation a country on its trade. The huge valley of the Amazon, for instance,
r ing due east and west, and therefore producing everywhere the Sr o staples, can never be of the same commercial importance as that
of the Mississippi, which runs north and south, and so connects climates of which the products vary and are naturally interchanged. In the scientific part of his subject, especially the sea and the atmosphere, Captain Maury is of course peculiarly at home.
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