reply,
but only drew her breath audibly hard.

I do not very much wonder at that, nor at my having to answer that
question for Mrs. Ryder. For her head was at that moment running, like
any other woman's, on the man she was in love with.

And the man she was in love with was the husband of the lady whose hair
she was combing, and who put her that curious question--plump.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Resources of California, comprising Agriculture, Mining, Geography,
Climate, Commerce, &c., and the Past and Future Development of the
State._ By JOHN S. HITTELL. Second Edition, with an Appendix on Oregon
and Washington Territory. San Francisco: A. Roman & Co. New York: W. J.
Widdleton.

This is a book almost as encyclopedic as its title would indicate; and
is evidently written with a desire to say everything which the theme
permits, and to say it truly. It answers almost every question that an
intelligent person can ask, in respect to California, besides a good
many which few intelligent persons know enough to propound. And it is a
proof of its honesty that it does not, after all, make California
overpoweringly attractive, whether in respect of climate, society, or
business. This is saying a good deal, when we consider that the Preface
sums up the allurements of the Pacific coast in a single sentence
covering two and a half pages.

The philosophy of the author is sometimes rather bewildering, as where
he defines "universal suffrage" to mean that "every sane adult white
male citizen, not a felon, may vote at every election." (p. 349.) His
general statements, too, are apt to be rather sweeping. For instance, he
says, in two different passages, that, "so far as we know, the climate
of San Francisco is the most equable and the mildest in the world." (pp.
29, 431.) Yet he puts the extremes of temperature in this favored
climate at +25 deg. and +97 deg. Fahrenheit; while at Fayal, in the Azores, the
recorded extremes are, if we mistake not, +40 deg. and +85 deg.; and no doubt
there are other temperate climates as uniform.

One might object, too, from the side of severe science, to his devoting
the "Reptile" department of his zooelogical section chiefly to spiders,
with incidental remarks on fleas and mosquitos. Perhaps it is to balance
Captain Stedman in Surinam, who under the head of "Insects" discourses
chiefly of vampyre-bats.

The wonders of the Yo-semite valley he describes as well as most people;