The British Wary: its Strength, Resources, and Administration. By Sir
Thomas Brassey, M.P. Vol. IV. (Longmans.)—Sir Thomas Brassey completes in this volume his work on the British Navy with a number of miscellaneous papers, Parliamentary speeches, letters, addresses, Ac., to which, in some cases, additions have been made.
The subjects are dockyards, reserves, training, and pensions. We have in these six hundred pages a vast mass of facts, for which we should have been more thankful if they had been given with more arrangement. As it is, they form a vast labyrinth, to which the index is scarcely an unfailing clue. One of these facts, of a more consolatory sort than Navy facts commonly are, we may quote :— -" The repairs of iron ships are very much less costly than those of wooden ships; and the proportion of their cost seems to be diminish- ing. In eight years, the annual cost of repairs to the 'Warrior' was one twenty-fifth of the original cost, in the case of the 'Bellerophon' it was one thirty-third part, in the ' Invincible ' class one-eightieth."
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