a comparison of Lee's tactics with those of the successive commanders opposed to him, it does show that lack of food, clothing, and munitions of war had a large share in conquering his army. It was an expedition to acquire shoes that precipitated the contest at Gettysburg, and the verdict of a young Irishman, who served on Fitz Lee's staff, concerning the Confederates was, "I never saw men fight better, but they don't ate enough!"
After the war many honorable and lucrative positions were offered to General Lee, but he chose to accept the presidency of Washington College, on a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. In this position he died, and the name of the college was changed to Washington and Lee University in his honor.
A steel portrait by Hall is the frontispiece of this volume; there are also several maps and a notably good index.
Popular Astronomy. A General Description of the Heavens. By Camille Flammarion. Translated from the French by J. Ellard Gore. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 685. Price, $4.50.
This work, the author says, is written for those who wish to have an account of the things which surround them, and who would like to acquire, without hard work, an elementary and exact idea of the present condition of the universe. M. Flaramarion is one of that race of brilliant writers on scientific subjects which France has developed within the past few years, who, endowed with great powers of the imagination and possessed of admirable gifts of style, have the faculty of presenting the truths of their special branches in the most vivid and picturesque language. He is not addicted to the faults, with which some of his school are chargeable, of indulging in exaggeration, and of seeking effect ac the expense of exactness. While he falls below none of them in vigor of description and power of interest, he is true to science, and not inaccurate. The present work has had a circulation at home probably unequaled among scientific books, and has received a distinguished reward of merit from the French Academy of Sciences; besides which the author has been given various other honors. The present edition of the Popular Astronomy has been translated, with the author's sanction, by J. Ellard Gore, author of other popular astronomical works, who has also edited it so as to incorporate the results of the discoveries that have been made since the French edition went to press, and has reduced the figures given by the author to English measures. M. Flammarion begins his picture with a presentation of the earth as a body in the sky, and as that one whose position and motions controlled the ideas of the ancients respecting the universe, which, in the ignorance then existing of the relation of the earth to the other bodies, were infected with many errors; and he describes the slow process by which these errors were corrected. The question. How was the earth formed? suggests an outline of the nebular hypothesis, which is given. From this planet the reader is taken to the moon, the nearest body to it, of which are given its astronomical elements and a physical description; then to the planets, in the order of their distances from the sun, with consideration of their apparent and real motions. In connection with the account of Uranus—besides our being told the mortifying fact that the existence of the earth and all its great men and great enterprises is and must always remain unknown to the people thereof—a discussion of the question of life in other worlds is given, with the conclusion that though the conditions in them are not compatible with the life of such beings as we know, we have no right to deny that there may be other beings adapted to those conditions. The discussion is continued in the chapter on Neptune, where the author declares that such a thing as a sterile and uninhabited desert world is contrary to the acts and views of Nature as we know her. The nature and orbits of comets are discussed. Are they really composed of carbon—diamonds of the sky? "Their importance would be much greater still if they should be found to carry in them the first combinations of carbon, for it is probable that it was by, these combinations that vegetable and animal life commenced on the earth and the other planets, and thus these vagrant bodies might be the sources of life on all the worlds." From another point of view the author gives reasons for supposing that comets' tails—considering the immense velocities at which they are carried, forty thousand miles a second in the
