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MR. Frederick Niven's recent references in these pages to the Canterbury Poets anthology of ballades and rondeaus suddenly reminded me that a rondeau of my own was printed in the little book. Although the year 1887, when the book, which is now rather difficult to pick up, appeared, is a long way off, I do not in the least feel like Methuselah. What, however, does lend a sense of the passing years is the change in literary taste, and the humpty‐dumptying by one generation of critics of the heroes of an older group. We have had a good opportunity of witnessing the process on a wholesale scale in the belittling of the Victorians, and Henley himself is a peculiarly ironic example of the process, for, having bludgeoned many literary reputations, his own has slumped, for the collected edition of his work which appeared a few years ago left the younger school of critics cold, while the influence of his rather truculent “young men” on the Scots Observer has faded.

The recent outbreak of severe epidemic illness at Brighton and Hove with the accompaniment of widespread anxiety, suffering and death, as well as great financial loss, both public and private, draws attention of the most unfavourable kind to what appears to be grave deficiency in the supervision and control of the milk supply of one of the most important towns on the south coast.

Luck, altruism, shrewdness, parsimony, industry, generosity, and what some authors (and librarians, perhaps) call hardness of heart have always been the characteristics of a successful publisher. He has first of all been a man of energy, sure of his own judgement, ready to accept losses, and (after success) conceited about his flair. In early days ready to work until all hours and to read every manuscript submitted to him (although comparatively few unsolicited manuscripts are worth publishing), he has been forced with the growth of his business to accept advice from employees of a peculiar type—those who, with no wish for glittering rewards, can tell him exactly what he needs to know about the inevitable avalanche. He has made friends in all professions; and these friends, also disinterested, have lent him their brains, instructing him in all sorts of possibilities in their own fields. He has used these friends without scruple.

At the seventeenth ordinary meeting of the Royal Society of Arts, on Wednesday, April 17, 1912, DR. RUDOLF MESSEL, President of the Society of Chemical Industry, in the chair, a paper on “Municipal Chemistry” was read by MR. J. H. COSTE, F.I.C. The following résumé of the points of interest to readers of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL is published by kind permission of the author and of the Royal Society of Arts:—

This chapter examines jury nullification, through which American juries refuse to convict criminal defendants in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt to express disapproval of specific criminal laws or of their application to particular defendants, through the political theory of Carl Schmitt. It distinguishes liberal components of American jurisprudence, especially the rule of law, from democratic sovereignty, and shows how the two are in deep tension with one another. In light of this tension it argues that jury nullification amounts to democratic sovereignty applied counter to the liberal state in a way that paradoxically upholds individual liberty.

During the many years of peace perhaps the most depressing thing about libraries was the absence of public interest in them. The newspapers, public men, writers on education, amongst whom were many people who made daily use of libraries, in their public utterances completely ignored them or confined their mention to the mendacious archaism that they were merely purveyors of poor fiction. This was most unsatisfactory, for no institution can rise to its full possibilities unless it is the subject of encouragement and healthy criticism. Now affairs are different. The war has been a crucible in which most things have been tested, and libraries are proving to be no exception.

This article examines the early post-World War II civil rights organizing of black women radicals affiliated with the organized left. It details the work of these women in such organizations as the Civil Rights Congress and Freedom newspaper as they fought to challenge the unjust conviction and sentencing of black defendants caught in the racial machinations of U.S. local and state criminal justice systems. These campaigns against what was provocatively called “legal lynching” formed a cornerstone of African American civil rights activism in the early postwar years. In centering the civil rights politics and organizing of these black women radicals, a more detailed picture emerges of the Communist Party-supported anti-legal lynching campaigns. Such a perspective moves beyond a view of civil rights legal activism as solely the work of lawyers, to examining the ways committed activists within the U.S. left, helped to build this legal activism and sustain an important left base in the U.S. during the Cold War.

THE catalogue, as a library appliance of importance, has had more attention devoted to it than, perhaps, any other method or factor of librarianship. Its construction, materials, rules for compilation and other aspects have all been considered at great length, and in every conceivable manner, so that little remains for exposition save some points in the policy of the catalogue, and its effects on progress and methods. In the early days of the municipal library movement, when methods were somewhat crude, and hedged round with restrictions of many kinds, the catalogue, even in the primitive form it then assumed, was the only key to the book‐wealth of a library, and as such its value was duly recognized. As time went on, and the vogue of the printed catalogue was consolidated, its importance as an appliance became more and more established, and when the first Newcastle catalogue appeared and received such an unusual amount of journalistic notice, the idea of the printed catalogue as the indispensable library tool was enormously enhanced from that time till quite recently. One undoubted result of this devotion to the catalogue has been to stereotype methods to a great extent, leading in the end to stagnation, and there are places even now where every department of the library is made to revolve round the catalogue. Whether it is altogether wise to subordinate everything in library work to the cult of the catalogue has been questioned by several librarians during the past few years, and it is because there is so much to be said against this policy that the following reflections are submitted.

Do these reference requests sound familiar? “I need to know what has happened on this day in history. Can you help me?” Or, “I'm doing a paper on Thornton Wilder. He was born on 17 April. Can you tell me who else was born on that day?” Or, “Are any national or regional anniversaries coming up next Friday?” These questions call for a special type of reference work—a book of days. A book of days (or day book) lists important events that have occurred on each day of the year throughout history, and is arranged by month and day. These works often include not only historical, cultural, and literary events, but also the dates of the births and deaths of notable people, commemorative days of saints, and special anniversaries. A book of days, for example, can reveal that historians Will and Ariel Durant were married in New York City Hall on Halloween in 1913, or that Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway were born on the same day in 1899 (21 July). This article will review some of the more useful books of days that are often found in reference collections—works that are uniquely suited to answer questions about each day of the year.