26 JANUARY 1889, Page 44

A Handbook of Foreign Missions. (Religious Tract Society.) — We have in

this volume a compendious account of the work of all the missionary societies of Christendom. The list begins with the "New England Company," an institution of which, we venture to say, the majority of our readers will never have heard. Yet it does a useful work among the Indians of the Dominion of Canada. It has three schools in Ontario and one in Canada, on which it expends an income of 24,000, derived, we are told, entirely from endowments. At the other end of the list comes the Salvation Army, which disposes, we see, of an income of more than £30,000. Exclusive of these two, and of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (which has handed over its missionary work to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), there are 24 Societies, These administer an income of about a million, not reckoning native contributions, and number more than a quarter of a million communicants, and about four hundred thousand scholars. Then there have to be reckoned the American missionary societies, those supported by Protestant communities on the Continent, and the Roman Catholic missions. Of these last, an interesting account is given in a very fairly written appendix.