A Treatise on Some of the Insects Injurious to Vegetation.  By THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS, M.D.  A New Edition, enlarged and improved, with Additions from the Author’s Manuscripts, and Original Notes.  Illustrated by Engravings drawn from Nature under the Supervision of Professor Agassiz.  Edited by Charles L. Flint, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture. 8vo.

This handsome octavo, prepared with such scientific care, is for the special benefit of Agriculture; and the order, method, and comprehensiveness so evident throughout the Treatise compel the admiration of all who study its beautifully illustrated pages.  The community is largely benefited by such an aid to the improvement of pursuits in which so many are concerned; and no cultivator of the soil can safely be ignorant of what Dr. Harris has studied and put on record for the use of those whose honorable occupation it is to till the earth.

As a work of Art we cannot refrain from special praise of the book before us.  Turning over its leaves is like a spring or summer ramble in the country.  All creeping and flying things seem harmlessly swarming in vivid beauty of color over its pages.  Such gorgeous moths we never saw before out of the flower-beds, and there are some butterflies and caterpillars reposing here and there between the leaves that must have slipped in and gone to sleep on a fine warm day in July.

The printing of the volume reaches the highest rank of excellence.  Messrs. Welch, Bigelow, & Company may take their place among the Typographical Masters of this or any other century.

Pictures of Old England.  By DR. REINHOLD PAULI, Author of “History of Alfred the Great,” etc.  Translated, with the Author’s Sanction, by E.C.  OTTE.  Cambridge [England]:  Macmillan & Co.  Small 8vo. pp. xii., 457.

Dr. Pauli is already known on both sides of the Atlantic as the author of two works of acknowledged learning and ability,—­a “History of England during the Middle Ages,” and a “History of Alfred the Great.”  In his new volume he furnishes some further fruits of his profound researches into the social and political history of England in the Middle Ages; and if the book will add little or nothing to his present reputation, it affords at least new evidence of his large acquaintance with English literature.  It comprises twelve descriptive essays on as many different topics, closely connected with his previous studies.  Among the best of these are the papers entitled “Monks and Mendicant Friars,” which give a brief and interesting account of monastic institutions in England; “The Hanseatic Steel-Yard in London,” comprising a history of that famous company of merchant-adventurers, with a description of the buildings occupied by them, and a sketch of their domestic life; and “London in the Middle Ages,” which presents an excellent description of the topography and general condition of the city during that period, and is illustrated