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 The wife of a U. S. lighthouse inspector, Mary Brad- ford Crowninshield, writes the story of a tour of inspection along the coast of Maine with two boys on board — for other boys of course. A most instructive as well as de- lightful excursion. The boys go up the towers and study the lamps and lanterns and all the devices by which a light in the night is made to tell the wary sailor the coast he is on ; and so does the reader. Stories of wrecks and rescues beguile the waiting times. There are no waiting times in the story. All Among the Lighthouses, or Cruise of the Goldenrod. By Mary Bradford Crowninshield. 32 illustrations, 392 pages. $2.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston. There's a vast amount of coast-lore besides. Mr. Grant Allen, who knows almost as much as anybody, has been making a book of twenty-eight separate parts, and says of it : " These little essays are mostly endeavors to put some of the latest results of science in simple, clear and intelligible language." Now that is exactly what nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of us want, if it isn't dry. And it isn't dry. Few of those who have the wonderful knowledge of what is going on in the learned world have the gift of popular explanation — the gift of telling of it. Mr. Allen has that gift ; the knowledge, the teaching grace, the popular faculty. Common Sense Science. By Grant Allen. 318 pages. $1.50. D. Lothrop Com- pany, Boston. By no means a list of new-found facts ; but the bearings of them on common subjects. v