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SAILORS ARE GREAT READERS, and every year the Ministry of Defence (R.N.) spends some £30,000 on the purchase of books for the officers and men of the Royal Navy. These are not haphazard collections thrown together from those available. Nearly 30 per cent of the money goes on general fiction, and 25 per cent on adventure stories, detective yarns and thrillers. Nine per cent is spent on science fiction, some 7 per cent each on sea stories, factual and fictional history books, and spy and war stories. Biographies and autobiographies account for 6 per cent, and the rest is made up of humorous stories and Westerns.

IT WAS ON THE ‘SIXPENNY’ SHELF outside the bookseller's window, its handsome leather binding a reproach to the inferior boards of this tasteless age. The flyleaf proclaimed it to be the sixteenth edition of A New General English Dictionary, Peculiarly Calculated for the use and improvement of such as are unacquainted with the Learned Languages, published in 1777. Not only that, but A Compendious English Grammar with general rules for the ready formation of one Part of Speech from another; by the due Application thereof such as understand English only may be able to write as correctly and elegantly as those who have been some years conversant in the Latin, Greek and other Languages. Also A Supplement of the Proper Names of the most noted Kingdoms, Provinces, Cities, Towns, Rivers, &c., throughout the Known World. And finally, to give good measure for the published price of six shillings, a list Of the most celebrated Emperors, Kings, Queens, Priests, Poets, Philosophers, Generals, etc., whether Jewish, Pagan, Mahometan or Christian.

HIGH ABOVE THE HOTELS and bed‐sitters of London's Earl's Court district towers the Ministry of Defence's twenty‐eight storey Empress State Building. On the twenty‐fifth floor of this imposing edifice is housed the largest and finest naval library in the world. It comprises more than a hundred and twenty‐five thousand books, over a hundred thousand pamphlets, a magnificent collection of charts and atlases, and some four‐hundred‐odd manuscripts. The whole collection is probably worth more than £1 million.

SYDNEY GOODSIR SMITH had a long and fully documented essay, ‘Trahison des Clercs or the Anti‐Scottish Lobby in Scottish Letters’, in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. II, No. 2, October 1964, in the course of which he wrote:

TODAY the northernmost community library in Britain is the County Library of the Shetlands, with its headquarters at Lerwick, the county town, which was preceded by a series of vigorous organizations for more than a century. But for over a hundred years the Publick Bibliotheck at Kirkwall was not only the oldest but the farthest north in all Britain. The founder was William Baikie, member of a leading family and proprietor of the estate of Holland in the island of Stronsay in the Orkneys. Born about 1638, he probably attended the very old Grammar School in Kirkwall, he was a student at the University of Edinburgh in 1656 and proceeded m.a. in the next year. A relative, Rev. Thomas Baikie, minister first of the ‘second charge’ of Kirkwall and a zealous student, apparently influenced the young man toward a life in the church, but the opportunities near home were few. Orcadians were loath to move to the mainland, and besides William's inherited properties were substantial. So he spent his life as a respected heritor and collector of books.

IN 1887 A. M. Wellington discussed in his book Economic Theory of the Location of Railways the way in which railroad layout could affect the development of the surrounding regions. At one point he analysed the cost/value relationship of two possible sites for a railway bridge near the fork of a river and decided that the more difficult site, despite higher costs, was preferable because it would provide a better basis for industrial growth and commerce in a city there.

‘A MAP OF THE WORLD that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at’ wrote Oscar Wilde. ‘It leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when it lands there it looks out and, seeing a better country, sets sail again. Progress is the realization of Utopias’.

In 1899 the medical practitioners of Dublin were confronted with an outbreak of a peculiar and obscure illness, characterised by symptoms which were very unusual. For want of a better explanation, the disorder, which seemed to be epidemic, was explained by the simple expedient of finding a name for it. It was labelled as “beri‐beri,” a tropical disease with very much the same clinical and pathological features as those observed at Dublin. Papers were read before certain societies, and then as the cases gradually diminished in number, the subject lost interest and was dropped.

In commenting upon a recent action brought by a Mr. Soper for a libel published upon him in a trade journal in regard to the sale of adulterated boots, the Daily Telegraph makes some excellent remarks, which ought to appeal strongly to all manufacturers, no matter what trade they are engaged in, who are really desirous of conducting their concerns upon honest and straightforward lines. The Daily Telegraph observes that reformers are rarely popular with their rivals, especially when they expose tricks in the trade, and advocate raising the standard of commercial honesty. Mr. Soper, the plaintiff in the case in question, was in that position. He had started a crusade against the practice of adulterating the soles of boots with paper fillings, and advocated a standard mark, in order to distinguish what is genuine from what is adulterated. This was resented by the threatened interests. Mr. Soper raised up enemies, and, in consequence, the article complained of was written, accusing him of “knowingly” selling adulterated boots at his shop while he thus publicly denounced them. The libel lay in the word “knowingly,” for it appeared that adulterated boots were actually sold at Mr. SoPer's establishment. But this was because he had failed to detect their presence; he had taken all the precautions which he could take, and he had cut open a number of pairs; he demanded guarantees from the manufacturers with whom he dealt; and, moreover, he was willing to take back any pair from any customer which were found to contain paper. The boot trade does not emerge with credit from this investigation. It was admitted that adulteration had been going on for the last ten years, and one manufacturer's traveller, when asked whether he was not surprised that paper should be found in the soles of boots costing seven or eight shillings, frankly replied, “Nothing surprises me in the boot trade.” The public will share his truly Horatian attitude of mind. Some such standard mark as that advocated by Mr. Soper seems to be the only method of protecting the public, if, indeed, the public desires to be protected, which seems doubtful. The ordinary customer is as helpless in a boot shop as in a curiosity shop. He must trust the word of the shopkeeper. And in turn the shopkeeper has to trust the manufacturers. The excuses of some of the latter, that the use of paper instead of leather did not mean any profit for them, or that the workmen could not be stopped from using cardboard fillings, will not do. There would be no adulteration if it were not profitable to adulterate. Adulteration seems to be rampant in most industries. One might even say that in some it is no longer the exception, but the rule. Wool, for example, has been treated just as scurvily as leather. Woollen no longer means woollen, but cotton with a pinch of wool. One has to ask for “guaranteed pure wool”— and pay accordingly—to feel any confidence that one is getting wool. So, too, with flannel and silk, and even cotton is adulterated with minerals to give it an essentially false weight. The ingredients from which “shoddy” is made would terrify the future wearer of it if he could see the “devil” at work, tearing up the noisome rags. Ignorance in this respect is becoming more blissful every year. Cheap sweets, cheap jams, cheap table delicacies, and all kinds of foods, all of which are warranted pure by the manufacturers, are, as a matter of fact, adulterated with impunity, and are all, in reality, “nasty” as well as “cheap.” The impotence of Government departments and of the Legislature in face of this condition of things has been demonstrated ad nauseam, and while such efforts as are made by local authorities to detect and suppress adulteration should receive all possible support and encouragement, it must be admitted that there is only one effective way of dealing with the evil—namely, the supply of guarantees of an independent and authoritative type to retail vendors and purchasers.

Of milk alone no less than 36,000 samples were purchased during 1904, almost as many as the total for all articles 10 years ago. Of these 4,031 (or 11.1 per cent.) were returned as adulterated. In the previous year 10.4 per cent. were condemned. The difference is not of necessity due to any increase in adulteration, as the figures are admittedly inaccurate owing to the differences of procedure on the part of Public Analysts in making out their reports. In support of this view it is mentioned that in 14 Metropolitan Districts where 6,270 milks were examined, 4.9 per cent. were reported as containing percentages of added water under 5 per cent., while in 15 other districts, where 3,205 samples were submitted, only 0.56 per cent. were returned as being adulterated to this extent. The explanation is that in the former case the Public Analyst adhered more or less rigidly to the standard fixed by the “Sale of Milk Regulations,” while in the latter, in most instances, where the amount of adulteration was under 5 per cent., the samples were reported as genuine. Here the Report takes what is a more or less new and certainly welcome departure, in definitely expressing an opinion for the guidance of those in doubt, and stating that so long as the “Sale of Milk Regulations” remains in force, “Public Analysts have no warrant for the adoption of a still lower standard.”