Burdett's Official Intelligencer, 1894. By Harry C. Burdett. (Spot- tiswoode
and Co.)—This large volume, of nearly eighteen hundred quarto pages, contains an exhaustive account of all "British, American, and Foreign Securities." In these are included Stocks National, Colonial, and Local ; Railways, Breweries, Banks, Com- mercial and Financial Shares. The editor is secretary to the Share and Loan Department of the Stock Exchange, and the work appears "under the Sanction of the Committee of the Stock Exchange." That it is full of interesting facts need hardly be said'; in fact, every line is of interest to some people, and some lines of interest to many. Even from among more prominent matters, it is difficult to make a selection. Here is a specimen. During the year 1893, Receivers were appointed to seventy-two railways in the United States, representing a capital of over three hundred and forty millions, about equivalent to the aggregate capital of the London and North-Western, the Midland, the Great Western, and the Great Northern. No small proportion of the loss implied in these figures has probably fallen on English holders. Another subject to which Mr. Burdett devotes a special chapter is "Foreign Government Stocks and English Holdings." The total amount held in England in 1891-92 was estimated at £763,807,091. This is about one quarter of the whole of such stocks in exist- ence. The Foreign Bonds in default in 1891-92 came to a total of £131,030,150. One quarter of this' sum would be more than thirty millions. Probably, considerably more than a quarter of the total of Argentines (A112,274,664) was held in England. English investors, for reasons which it would not be difficult to name, were much taken by Argentina Securities.
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