These hints are offered to the publishers and encouragers of popular works for general readers, at economical prices; and they might be extended.  For example, dictionaries of medicine for family use have great sale.  Sometimes, it is believed, they are stereotyped.  Why should not later practice and discoveries be published in a cheaper supplement, to preserve the value of the original work?  Thus, in my family, I use the excellent Cyclopaedia of Popular Medicine published by Dr. Murray in 1842; but on looking into it for “Chloroform” and “Cod Liver Oil,” no such articles are to be found, as they were not known in 1842.  The skilful will find many other omissions.

IV.  There might be a greater difficulty in constructing a popular commercial or statistical dictionary, at a moderate price, to be supplied with supplements at later intervals.  But even as to these, there is a good model in Waterston’s Small Dictionary of Commerce, published in 1844, which, with a supplement, might afford, for a few shillings, to give all the later information derived from the free-trade measures and extension of our colonies.  Waterston’s original work is advertised often for sale at 10s. or 12s., and a supplement at 3s. would bring it within the reach of the great bulk of readers.

These suggestions are offered without the slightest intention to depreciate or disparage the greater and more elaborate works of Mr. McCulloch, and others who compile and publish works worthy of reference, and standards of authority among men of highest science.  No man who can afford it would ever be without the latest edition (without the aid of supplements) of large works; but it is manifest that there has been a great neglect to supply the mass of readers in ordinary circumstances with books of common reference, at moderate prices; and I hope that some publishers of enterprise and sagacity will see it to be their interest to act on the advice now offered.

PHILANTHROPOS.

* * * * *

RIB, WHY THE FIRST WOMAN FORMED FROM.

Allow me to request a place for the following curious and quaint exposition of the propriety of the selection of the rib as the material out of which our first mother Eve was formed; and the ingenious illustration which it is made to afford of the relation between wife and husband. {214}

“Thirdly, God so ordered the matter betwixt them, that this adhaesion and agglutination of one to the other should be perpetuall.  For by taking a bone from the man (who was nimium osseus, exceeded and was somewhat monstrous, by one bone too much) to strengthen the woman, and by putting flesh in steede thereof to mollifie the man, he made a sweete complexion and temper betwixt them, like harmony in musicke, for their amiable cohabitation.

“Fourthly, that bone which God tooke from the man, was from out the midst of