One of the most valuable reference works of recent publication is The Epitome of Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern History.  By Carl Ploetz.  Translated from the German, with extensive additions, by William H. Tillinghast, of the Harvard University library.  One volume. pp. 618.  Houghton, Mifflin, and Company:  Boston. 1884.

The author of the original work, Professor Doctor Carl Ploetz, is well known in Germany as a veteran teacher and writer of educational books which have a high reputation, excellence, and authority.  With regard to the present work, it should be observed that it has passed through seven editions in Germany.  As a book of reference, either for the student or the general reader, its tested usefulness is a sufficient guaranty for its wide adoption in the present enlarged form.  The scope of The Epitome may be summarized as follows:  Universal history is first treated by dividing it into three periods.  First, ancient history, from the earliest historical information to the year 375 A.D.  Second, mediaeval, from that date to the discovery of America, in 1492.  Third, modern history, from the last date to the year 1883.

We have received from the author, the Honorable Samuel Abbott Green, M.D., a pamphlet entitled “Notes on a Copy of Dr. William Douglass’s Almanack for 1743, touching on the subject of medicine in Massachusetts before his time.”  It is specially interesting to the members of the medical fraternity, as well as to antiquaries.

CORRECTION.—­The article upon Lovewell’s fight at Pigwacket, printed in the February number of the Bay State (page 83), contained a trifling error, but one which deserves correction.  It is stated that the township of land with which the General Court, in 1774, rewarded the services of the troops under Lovewell, was subsequently divided, forming the towns of Lovell and New Sweden.  The mistake was upon the name of the latter town.  It should have been written Sweden.  New Sweden is the recent Swedish colony of Aroostook County.

I.B.C.

[Illustration:  Boar’s Head House]

From the eastern end of Long Island, toward the west and south, extends a dreary monotony of sandbeach along the whole Atlantic coast, to the extreme southern cape of Florida, thence along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the Rio Grande, broken only by occasional inlets.  The picturesque coast scenery is mostly north and east of Cape Cod.  Following along the seaboard from Cape Ann, one comes, a few miles north of the mouth of the Merrimack River, in view of a bold promontory extending into the waters of the Atlantic, and aptly named, in years agone, Boar’s Head.

The traveler in search of a delightful seaside resort for the summer need go no further.  For here, amidst the most charming of marine scenery, that veteran landlord and genial host, Stebbins H. Dumas, has erected, for the benefit of the public, a hotel, spacious, well appointed, and ably conducted; inviting and especially homelike; every room commanding a view of the ocean.