In the unlikely event of any one instituting a minute comparison between this edition and its predecessor, he would find minor alterations innumerable, — here a line erased, there a paragraph added, or again a figure changed, a statement qualified, a description or a list brought up to date, even a score of completely new articles inserted. But take it altogether, the book remains the same as heretofore. It would seem to have found favour in many quarters, to judge from the man ner in which, years after its first appearance, newspapers and book-makers continue to quote wholesale from it without acknowledgment and the title, which it cost us much cogitation to devise, and which we borrowed ultimately from the Spanish phrase cosus de Espaua, has passed into general use, even coming to supply titles for similar works written about other lands in imitation of this one.