BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9635, 6 October 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Ax Essay on' Popular Ignorance : By John Foster. George Bell and Sons, London.—This popular essay of the author is now issued in a cheap form in Bell's Indian and Colonial Library. The charge of popular ignorance, used in -a national sense, is not so well founded in Britain now as when the essay was originally written, bub there is still a great deal to bo done in tire way of national education and social reform.

Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute : Published by the Institute, Northumberland Avenue, London, W.C. — We have to hand volume xxxv., 1893-04. In addition to information about the objects, membership, finance and general proceedings of the Institute, there are published the papers read before ib from time to tftne. Sor,:ie of these papers are, as mighb be expected, of special interest) to ourselves, notably "State Socialism and Labour Government in Antipodean Britain" (Lord Onslow), " The Australian Outlook" (Miss Shaw), "The British Empire" (General Chesney), " Recent Economic Developments of Australian Enterprise" (Hon. James Inglis), "Canada in Relation to the Unity of the Empire" (Bishop Selwyn). These papers should be carefully perused by all who desire bo understand the progress of the great Empire to which wo belong, and the relations of the mother country to her colonial dependencies. Appended is a report of a meet.ing of the Library Association of the United Kingdom, and an interesting paper on " The Library of the Colonial Institute" (Mr. Brose), which shows how much has been done to form a collection of works relating to the history and progress of the colonies. A list of resident and non-resident Fellows is also I

given, and the memorial of colonists to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by way of protest against the proposed death succession duties of colonists domiciled in the United Kingdom. The Ottawa Conference.—The Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee issues from 30, Charles-street, Berkeley Square, London V v ., a pamphlet on the conference at Ottawa, and the Colonies and Maritime

Defence, in which it puts the case from a British and also from a colonial point of viow. The statistics as showing the smallness of tho colonial contributions to Imperial defence, taking tho relative wealth and population of the mother country and the colonies, are certainly very striking. The Sign of Four : By A. Conan Doyle. Longmans, Green, and Co., London. —We have to acknowledge the receipt of the above popular work, one of the series of Longman's Colonial Library (through Messrs. J. H. Upton and Co., booksellers, of this city), and which has now run into a fifth edition. The story is wholly out of the ordinary run of tales of fiction, and is of absorbing interest throughout. Sherlock Holmes, a devotee of cocaine, unearths and unravels a story of crime and blood— of plot and counterplot—with the genius of a Vidocq, and the unerring certainty of a sleuth-hound.