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470 Notes and News The Bulletin of the New York Public Library for October contains Part I. of " Naval Letters from Captain Percival Drayton, 1861-1865 "• The letters in this installment, about twenty-seven in number, are written to Lydig M. Hoyt and Alexander Hamilton, jr., and are dated from various points along the Atlantic coast. Drayton was at the Philadel- phia Navy Yard at the outbreak of the war, but was soon placed in com- mand of the Pawnee, in Dupont's squadron, and later in command of the Passaic. Then, after having been stationed at the New York Navy Yard, he was appointed fleet captain under Farragut. Life and Letters of Robert Edzvard Lee, by Rev. J. William Tones (New York and Washington, Neale Publishing Company, 1906, pp. 486). contains a few letters of Lee, for the most part unimportant, that have not before been published. As Mr. Jones has been connected with Washington and Lee University since the close of the war, the few pages of personal reminiscences of Lee are perhaps the most interesting part of the book. W. L. Fleming's Documentary History of Reconstruction (Cleve- land, Arthur H. Clark Company, two vols.) has just appeared. From a New England Woman's Diary in Dixie in i86j, by Mary Ames (Springfield, Mass., pp. 125), relates the experiences from day to day of Miss Ames as a teacher of freedmen on Edisto Island off the South Carolina coast, from May, 1865, to September, 1866. The narra- tive deals mainly with the negroes, and touches but lightly on political affairs. Professor James A. Woodburn of Indiana State University (Bloom- ington, Indiana) has in preparation a biography of Thaddeus Stevens, and will welcome information respecting material bearing on his subject. LOCAL ITEMS ARRANGED IN GEOGRAPHICAL ORDER There has recently been printed (Concord, N. H., Rumford Print- ing Company, 1905) and distributed the argument for the defendants on final hearing delivered in 1905 by A. S. Batchellor, Henry F. Hollis, and Will P. Buckley before the United States Circuit Court, District of New Hampshire, in the case of Percy Summer Club vs. Joseph C. Astlc and Jacob Astle (No. 315 Equity). The contention of the argument is that " a natural fresh-water pond containing ten acres, is a large or great pond; and that this is judicially recognized and affirmed as the common law lioth in the province and state." The historical bearing of the argument lies in that part of it that deals with the establishment and recognition of the common law in New Hampshire. A biography bearing closely upon the political history of New Hamp- shire just after the Civil War is James O. Lyford's Life of Edward H. Rollins (Boston, Estes and Company, pp. 547)- To the Transactions of the Colonial Society of .AJassachusetts for February, 1906, Rev. Henry A. Parker contrilnUed a biography of Rev.