Miscellaneous.
NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
The Botany of the Eastern Borders, with the Popular Names and Uses of the Plants, and of the Customs and Beliefs which have been associated with them, by George Johnson, M.D. This, the first volume of The Natural History of the Eastern Borders, is a book calculated to please a very large body of readers. The botanist will like it for the able manner in which the various plants indigenous to the district are described. The lover of Old World associations will be delighted with the industry with which Dr. Johnson has collected, and the care with which he has recorded their popular names, and preserved the various bits of folk lore associated with those popular names, or their supposed medicinal virtues. The antiquary will be gratified by the bits of archæological gossip, and the biographical sketches so pleasantly introduced; and the general reader with the kindly spirit with which Dr. Johnson will enlist him in his company—
" . . . Unconstrain'd to rove along
The bushy brakes and glens among."
Marry, it were a pleasant thing to join the Berwickshire Natural History Club in one of their rambles through the Eastern Borders.
Mr. Bohn has just added to his Antiquarian Library a volume which will be received with great satisfaction by all who take an interest in the antiquity of Egypt. It is a translation by the Misses Horner of Dr. Lepsius' Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai, with Extracts from his Chronology of the Egyptians, with reference to the Exodus of the Israelites, revised by the Author. Dr. Lepsius, it may be mentioned, was at the head of the scientific expedition appointed by the King of Prussia to investigate the remains of ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian civilisation, still in preservation in the Nile valley and the adjacent countries; and in this cheap volume we have that accomplished traveller's own account of what that expedition was able to accomplish.
We are at length enabled to answer the Query which was addressed to us some time since on the subject of the continuation of Mr. MacCabe's Catholic History of England. The third volume is now at press, and will be issued in the course of the next publishing season.
Books Received.—A Letter to a Convocation-Man concerning the Rights, Powers, and Privileges of that Body, first published in 1697. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. W. Fraser, B.C.L. This reprint of a very rare tract will no doubt be prized by the numerous advocates for the re-assembling of Convocation, who must feel indebted to Mr. Fraser for the care and learning with which he has executed his editorial task.—A Collection of Curious, Interesting, and Facetious Epitaphs, Monumental Inscriptions, &c., by Joseph Simpson. We think the editor would have some difficulty in authenticating many of the epitaphs in his collection, which seems to have been formed upon no settled principle.—The Physiology of Temperance and Total Abstinence, being an Examination of the Effects of the Excessive, Moderate, and Occasional Use of Alcoholic Liquors on the Healthy Human System, by Dr. Carpenter: a shilling pamphlet, temperately written and closely argued, and well deserving the attention of all, even of the most temperate.