dians from the mere sordid extinction which has
befallen most of their southern congeners, as it was the Spaniards who
kept the California tribes alive. The natives--or rather the French
half-breeds--were made trappers and voyageurs before the English conquest
of the province. But for that preparation they might have gone the way of
our Indians under Anglo-Saxon pressure. Climate also favored them. Only an
infinitesimal fraction of British America is capable of white
colonization.

Dropping a theme which bids fair to remain undisposed of, like the
disputes of Hogarth's doctors, till the patient is dead, we revert to
Colonel Dodge's book, and to those of its pages which it is clear he wrote
most _en amateur_. Soldier and student, he is above all a sportsman. It is
delightful to follow him over the plain and (in spirit and untearable
trousers) into the chaparral. Anywhere between the Rio Grande, the
Missouri and Bridger's Pass he seems to be as much at home as on his own
farm. All its live-stock is familiar to him. His sheep are of the big-horn
breed; his black cattle, the two varieties of buffalo, mountain and
lowland; and his poultry, the prairie-chicken and its relatives. He is
both interesting and instructive. The puma and the panther he avers to be
distinct species. The prong-horned antelope--the only American species,
and now, we believe, assigned by naturalists to a genus of its own--he
demonstrates to shed its horns. He describes six species of native grouse;
to which if we add two others not found within the limits he describes, we
have eight for the United States against two in Great Britain and four
for all Europe. His stories of sport and adventure are given with
circumstance and animation. Extra spice is thrown in by a moderate
infusion of second-hand relations of a more or less imaginative character,
which he is careful to separate from the fruit of his own experience and
observation. The physical conformation of the country and its climate are
described with remarkable distinctness. We do not know a book on the
subject that comes up more faithfully to its title.

_Books Received._

The Struggle against Absolute Monarchy, 1603-1688: Epochs of
English History. By Bertha Meriton Cordery. (Harper's Half-Hour
Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Tudors and the Reformation, 1485-1603: Epochs of English
History. By M. Creighton, M.A. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New
York: