ONE of the “Fathers,” the great Austin we believe of Hippo, when asked which was the first Christian virtue, replied, Humility! And the second? Humility! And the third? Still Humility! So Dr. Wills would seem consciously or unconsciously to think that of travellers the first, second, and third virtue is anecdote! The result of this belief is one of the most graphic and entertaining books of travel ever published. With anecdote it begins, with anecdote it ends, and its substance is anecdote, and all these endless anecdotes are themselves distinguished by three cardinal virtues. They are characteristic, they are well told, and they are infinitely varied. By way of experiment we have opened the book at haphazard at twelve different places, and at every place there was an anecdote, some pithy story or other illustrating the social customs and habits of the Persians and even of the very plants and animals of the Iranian world, where the author's lot was cast for the space of fifteen years (1866–1881) as “one of the medical officers of Her Majesty's Telegraph Department in Persia.” On one of the pages thus exposed occurs the subjoined incident bearing directly on the “scorpion controversy” recently carried on in the correspondence columns of NATURE:— The Land of the Lion and Sun: or, Modern Persia. By C. J. Wills (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883.)