followed by systematic botanists—is made in the ease of the gymnospei-ms, which are separated from the dicotyledons and made a distinct class, coming immediately after the cryptogams. "In nature," the author says, "we find gymnosperms associated with the higher cryptogams in the order of development; they form comjjrehensive types, including the characters of. cryptogams, monocotyledons, and dicotyledons—they are not true dicotyledons"; and she believes that if Jjssieu had known what has been discovered since his time, he would have favored the change. The "Manual of Plants," forming the second part of the volume (some 200 pages), contains lists of all the known orders with their representative genera—a very desirable feature, for few of our manuals give them so exhaustively—with tables of abbreviations and etymons, or roots of botanical terms and names of plants.
Soaps and Candles. Edited by James Cameron. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 30(i. Price, $2.25. Like the other technical hand-books in the same series, this volume consists of the articles in Cooley's "Cyclopaedia" on the subjects to which it is devoted, with added information from various sources. The user of the book is assumed to have some knowledge of general and analytical chemistry, hence details of many chemical processes are omitted. In the chapters devoted to soaps, the materials employed are enumerated, and the preliminary treatment of raw fatty substances is described. Lye-testing by the hydrometer and the chemistry of saponification are touched upon, and the apparatus and arrangement of the factory are then set forth. Processes are given for manufacturing a large number of household, toilet, medicinal, red-oil, soft, and industrial soaps, also a dozen methods of recovering glycerin from spent lyes. A chapter on testing soaps closes this part of the volume. In the same manner the manufacture of candles is described. The volume is illustrated with fifty-four cuts of apparatus.
Not only new but novel is Quick CooMng (Putnam, $1), which its author calls "a book cf culinary heresies." Its chief departure from the established culinary creed is in asserting that "there is no waste in the
kitchen so much to be deplored as wasted time." Many of the recipes in the common run of cook-books are extremely complicated, and few women have the faintest realization of the extravagant amount of time they consume in proportion to the results achieved. They have been made in the most random fashion by adding one substance and manipulation after another, according to the fancy of the maker, and then slavishly followed, without any intelligent effort to find a simpler process for attaining an equivalent result. "Quick Cooking" claims to furnish, in five, ten, or twenty minutes, dishes as delicate and appetizing as those elaborate affairs which one must potter over from twice to ten times as long. This book contains six hundred and thirty recipes, three hundred and forty of which "can, severally or in groups, be made ready for the table in from five to fifteen minutes, and two hundred and fifty of which require from fifteen to forty minutes, or, rarely, an hour's time." A "Black List" of thirty-nine favorite recipes is appended, so called because the most strenuous efforts have not succeeded in materially reducing the time which these dishes require. Each of the three divisions is arranged alphabetically. The whole range of dishes, from soups to sweetmeats, is represented. Prefixed to the recipes are some practical suggestions of a general character, and a table of weights and measures.
"Comfort on $150 a year " is an idea that will provoke from many an incredulous smile, but that this idea can be realized by intelligent management is demonstrated in How she did it, by Mary Cruger (Appleton, 50 cents). In pleasant story form is told how Faith Arden, with a few hundred dollars and borrowing $700 more on mortgage, buys an acre of rocky hill-side, erects a cottage upon it, which she supplies with furniture from her former home, and some articles constructed by herself, with the aid of a handy carpenter, and then begins housekeeping alone. She has an income of $300 a year, and at the end of six months finds that her living expenses, when there arc no extra outlays, need not exceed $150 a year, leaving an equal sum for interest, taxes, and the reduction of her mortgage. This gives her a varied fare and many comforts. A former school-friend, with two children old enough