In _Commissioner Hume, a Story of New York Schools_, a sequel to Roderick Hume, the Story of a New York Teacher, Mr. _C. W. Bardeen_ has undertaken to give a picture of rural New York schools, or rather of the administration of school affairs by commissioners as they were in 1875, and he declares it to be accurate. He represents, however, that the general tone of the commissioners has vastly changed in the period that has intervened since then, and the conditions described in the volume no longer prevail. The book is offered, therefore, as a contribution to educational history. (Published by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.)
The southern half of Missouri and the Black Hills of South Dakota offer exceptionally delightful regions for the study of caves, or speleology, as well as of geology and geography. Each of these regions has its peculiar geological history and its own scenery, and possesses a number of truly wonderful caves. Some of the more important of these caves and the scenery amid which they lie are described by Mrs. _Luella Agnes_ Owen in the book _Cave Regions of the Black Hills_ (Cincinnati: the Editor Publishing Company), and we have been much interested in reading the accounts. The descriptions are introduced by summaries of the methods of the formation of caves and of the results of the geological and topographical explorations of the regions in which they are situated, as presented in official reports and scientific memoirs. The descriptions are for the most part relations of the author's personal explorations of the caves. The most important of these caves are Marble Cave, "the finest yet explored in Missouri," and Wind Cave, in South Dakota, said to be the largest known after the Mammoth Cave. Others are Fairy, Powell, Stone County, Oregon County Caves and the Grand Gulf in Missouri, and the Onyx and Crystal Caves in South Dakota. Many illustrations are given. The author has fine descriptive powers, but her literary style needs discipline. She is the first American, and the only woman, so far, elected to membership in the Société de Speleologie of Paris.
A valuable paper on _Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts_ is published by Mr. _Fred S. Hall_ as the first number of the eleventh volume of the Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law. In it, the author having fixed the definition of sympathetic strikes and lockouts as distinguished from those not sympathetic, and having found the difference between a strike and a lockout, discusses the origin and development of the two sympathetic movements, analyzes them, and forecasts the future as it is indicated by the past. Illustrations are freely drawn from the important strikes and lockouts that have occurred in the United States and abroad for a number of years past.