ead, Sugar,
Storing Fruit, Beer from Sugar, &c. In _Useful Arts_ are about
half-a-dozen, pages. To these heads are added a List of Patents, Notices
of Expeditions of Discovery, and a copious Index. The Illustrations,
about twenty in number, represent such inventions as are most attractive
by their ingenuity; and by way of Synopsis we may state that the whole
contents of the volume are nearly 400 abstracts, including probably
three times as many _new facts_.

The utility of such a yearly volume speaks for itself, and however
ungracefully a recommendation might come from our pen we could not
refrain from thus introducing it to the readers of the _Mirror_
especially as the _Arcana of Science_ contain scarcely half-a-dozen
pages of facts which have been detailed in our weekly columns.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

* * * * *

CALENDAR OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

This volume professes to be "A Familiar Analysis of the Calendar of
the Church of England," by explaining and illustrating its Fasts and
Festivals, &c., in the form of Question and Answer. The reader will
not look for novelty in such a work. The editors of Time's Telescope,
Clavis Calendaria, the Every-day Book, &c., have been too long and too
laboriously employed in illustrating every point of the year's history,
to lead us to expect any new attraction. Indeed, the preface of the
present work does not profess to furnish any such inducement, the editor
resting his claim on the cheapness of his book in comparison with
the Every-day Book. This is rather an ungracious recommendation: the
"Analysis" consists of less than three hundred pages, and is sold
for five or six shillings; but these three hundred pages only equal
seventy-five pages of the Every-day Book, or less than five sheets,
which the public know may be purchased for fifteen-pence. One of the
pretensions of the "Analysis" is its condensed form, but we suspect
Mr. Valpy's _Epitomizing_ press would reduce the editor's three hundred
pages to seventy-five. It is a thankless office to be obliged to speak
thus of a book on which some pains have been bestowed. Now, had it
been printed within the compass of an eighteen-penny or two shilling
catechism, the desired object would have been obtained; but, as it
appears, in the type of a large church prayer-book, what may have been
gained in arrangement, must be paid for in paper and print, so th