# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 46/December 1894/Literary Notices

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Systematic Science Teaching. By Edward Gardnier Howe. International Education Series, No. 27. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1894. Pp. 326. Price, $1.50.
This is a book the value of which to the educator, both parent and teacher, it would be difficult to overestimate. To the advanced instructors of to-day the value of science teaching is no longer in question. The book is full of suggestion, and shows the line of investigation adapted to each province of Nature.
Dr. Harris well says, in his preface, that the pupil must get not only the dead results but also the living method—the method of observation and discovery; that the powers of observation are strengthened chiefly by learning to think about what one sees; that seeing only fails to produce that cultivation of observation that the capacity for scientific observation produces—the act of recognizing, not the mere seeing, giving scientific knowledge. He goes on to say: "Science leads to invention, and invention leads to the demand for a scientifically educated class of laborers. Education emancipates the laborer from the deadening effects of repetition and habit, the monotony of mere mechanical toil, and opens to him a vista of new inventions and more useful combinations." The necessity is suggested for the introduction of the results and methods of science into the elementary schools as early as possible, in view of their influence upon civilization.
Mr. Howe's work is very carefully graded, and he insures the constant interest of the pupil by a happy selection of objects from Nature. The most valuable feature, however, of this work is the detailed hints and directions to the teacher and pupil, that will secure correct and accurate habits of scientific observation.
The results of this systematic teaching of science have been exceedingly satisfactory. Interest has rarely flagged, and the senses have been developed to a surprising degree; the hand has been trained in the art of experiment, and the mental powers have made a steady and healthy growth. An exactness and freedom of expression have been attained which is the truest index of a mind full of observed facts and trained to the thoughtful consideration of matters presented. The advanced pupil has gone to the study of books with ease and profit, but the work has reached deeper and further; the inborn love of childhood for birds, flowers, and pretty stones has quickly responded to wise encouragement and become the present source of much happiness, and this of the purest sort. Incidentally tending to keep out low pleasures, it has been in many cases the prelude to the recreations of mature life.
That with the pleasurable acquiring of much useful knowledge the sense can be quickened, the mental powers developed, and a loving interest in ever-present and pure things be fostered, which in mature life shall render us in a great degree independent of time, place, or man's device for needed recreation, is certainly all that need be said in its favor.
​In encouraging the teacher to patience and advising the school board to generosity in regard to this work, Mr. Howe says, "If the children are learning 'to think to a conclusion,' if they are becoming observant, if they are interested in their school and go home full of the 'things they have seen and done, do not criticise because those 'things' are 'bugs and weeds,' nor complain because more words are not learned, or arithmetical problems solved. The 'words' may be meaningless and problems mechanical, but active, willing seeing and thinking is in the line of all that is desirable."
Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. To the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-'89. Pp. 822. Eleventh Annual Report, 1889'90. Pp. 553. By J. W. Powell, Director. Washington: Government Printing Office.
The work of this bureau is substantially continuous, so that these two noble reports may be treated as one. In this work the lines of investigation which have appeared from time to time the most useful or the most pressing have been confided to persons trained in or known to be specially adapted to their pursuit. During the period covered by these reports, the work of exploring the mounds of the eastern United States was carried on under the superintendence of Dr. Cyrus Thomas; during the latter part of the time Dr. Thomas was engaged in preparing a final report on his work. Colonel Garrick Mallery visited Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick in studying the pictographs of the Abnaki and Micmac Indians. W. J. Hoffman gave his attention to pictographs, petroglyphs, and birch-bark records in the Northwest, and to the records and ceremonies of the Midē'wiwin or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwas, an order of shamans professing the power to prophesy, to cure disease, and to confer success in the chase. H. W. Henshaw and Jeremiah Curtin collected vocabularies and myths on the Pacific coast, and did other linguistic work. James Mooney investigated the customs, languages, etc., of the Cherokees at their reservation in North Carolina, made a collection of the plants used by them in medicine, and studied their antiquities. Victor Mindeleff explored ruins and collected potteries in Arizona. The Rev. J. Owen Dorsey prepared many papers embodying the results of previous studies. A. S. Gatschett completed his Klamath Grammar, and embodied in literary form the fruits of his other investigations among the Klamath Indians. The illustrations for the publications of the bureau were edited by W. H. Holmes, who was also active in his studies of aboriginal archaeology. The publications of the bureau for the two years include the Bibliographies of the Iroquoian and Muskhogean Languages, by J. C. Pilling; The Problem of the Ohio Mounds, by Cyrus Thomas; Textile Fabrics of Ancient Peru, Ancient Art of the Province of Chiriqui, Colombia, and A Study of the Textile Art and its Relation to the Development of Form and Ornament, by W. H. Holmes; Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices, and the Circular, Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio, by Cyrus Thomas; Osage Traditions, by the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey; and the Central Eskimo, by Dr. Franz Boas. The volume containing the tenth report is nearly all occupied with the elaborate work, richly illustrated, of Colonel Garrick Mallery, on the Picture Writing of the American Indians. The volume of the eleventh report contains papers on The Sia (Pueblo), by Matilda Coxe Stevenson; Ethnology of the Ungava District, by Lucien M. Turner; and A Study of Siouan Cults, by J. Owen Dorsey.
School Management. By Emerson E. White, A. M., LL. D. American Book Company. Pp. 320. Price, $1.
The subject emphasized in this volume is character training. The author considers that the proper end of school government is to prepare pupils for self-control and self-direction in life. Good order and application in study are essential conditions in attaining this result, but must not be substituted for the goal itself. From this it follows that the well-governed school depends more upon what the teacher is than what his method may be. If only one law were written above the door of every American schoolroom it ought to be. No man or woman shall enter here as teacher whose life is not a good model for the young to copy.
The elements of governing power are described as fresh knowledge, skill in ​instruction, heart-power, self-control, presentmindednets, wisdom in common things, and positive moral character. The best qualified teacher, however, may fail if his methods of instruction or discipline are brought into disrepute through official interference, or if his surroundings are cramped and unhealthful.
The mechanical means of government suggested are the proper seating of pupils, a good programme, a self-regulating system, and as few rules as possible. Under the head of moral training is embraced the education of the will, school incentives, punishment, and the principles of direct ethical instruction. Thirty-two topics in morals and manners are named and the material given for fifteen lessons in the primary grades and for sixteen in higher classes. A discussion of the function of religion in the school is given at the close. In this it is held that religious motives may be rightfully introduced in order to render moral teaching efficient.
Although the ethical value of several of the stories may be questioned, the fundamental lessons are such as are greatly needed in public schools, and in the hands of an earnest teacher the book can not fail to be a means of moral uplifting.
The Orthoëpist. By Alfred Ayres. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 292. Price, $1.
This is a revised edition of a little manual upon pronunciation that appeared fourteen years ago. A thousand words that are often mispronounced have been added, and among these are many foreign names which betray the unlettered. We are told to avoid saying ŏl'wuz for al-wāys, sparrowgrass for as-par'a-gus, and be-cŏz for be-cause. Educated people may pass by the ranks where these vulgarisms are enrolled and meet foreign recruits of doubtful address.
Although the author presents chamois as shăm'wa and haricot as ă'rē'kō', he states, "It is well to make one's pronunciation when speaking English as English as permissible." From this we find that Mr. Ayres has his little linguistic leanings, since the word singled out for Anglicizing is cicerone, given as sĭse-rône, while massage, which in the International is English mass'-age, appears here only as ma-sazh'. Chemical terms are variously marked. The author favors quī-nīne, and says of iodine, "My impression is that long i will ultimately prevail." Bromide and chloride are marked both short and long, from which it may be judged that Mr. Ayres is unfamiliar with the late decree of chemists making the i short, and even dropping the final e in spelling. Among English words boatswain is given as bosn, a colloquialism according to the International, while bellows and strew are preferred as bĕl-lus and strō. In regard to his own profession, he tells us that any pronunciation but or'thoëpy and or'thoëpist sounds inelegant to him. Unhappily, we know the Greek progenitor of the word is ὸρθοέπεία, and that the French with loyal grace make this orthoépie. In English too we remember or-thog' ra-phy and orthog'amy from the same root ὸρθὀς, and we can not understand why there should be a lack of elegance in accenting the word "correct" correctly according to its descent.
But probably the whole trouble is with us; we are asking that the orthoëpist should verify his decisions in a scientific manner by some rule of consistency or etymology, whereas his art is in an inchoate state, and this little book helps us to realize its struggle for development.
A System of Lucid Shorthand. Devised by William George Spencer. With a Prefatory Note by Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 30. Price, 50 cents.
Those who have examined his Inventional Geometry could not fail to be convinced that W. G. Spencer was a man of no small mental caliber. This conviction will be strengthened by a glance at the productron before us. The system of shorthand which it embodies was devised by him in the course of a few years preceding 1833. The present exposition was drawn up by his son, Herbert Spencer, in 1843, and is now printed unchanged, except by the addition of four specimens. In his prefatory note Mr. Herbert Spencer states that he has been impelled to publish the system at this late day "from the conviction, long since formed and still unshaken, that the Lucid Shorthand ought to replace ordinary writing. Possessing, as it does, not equal legibility but greater legibility (the distinctions among the symbols being so much more marked), and ​having at the same time the brevity which short-hands in general possess, the use of it for all purposes would be immensely advantageous to mankind." A letter from Herbert Spencer to his father, and one from his father to him, both written early in 1843, are reproduced in photoprint, as specimens of continuous writing by this system.
Wealth against Commonwealth. By Henry Demarest Lloyd. New York: Harper & Brothers. Pp. 563. Price, 2.50.
The larger part of this book is taken up with the detailed history of the Standard Oil Trust, the facts being cited from records of courts and from the testimony presented to congressional and State legislative committees. While Mr. Lloyd has written an arraignment, and is at no pains to conceal his hatred of this trust, he offers a mass of evidence which in volume and significance is fairly startling. Abating all that in his book is due to the heat of a prosecuting attorney, enough remains to show that aggregated wealth in this country has been and is grossly abused to the public oppression. The vast power of the Standard Oil Trust began in the dishonesty of railroad managers, who, interested in the dividends of the trust, betrayed their own employers, the stockholders in the railroads, and not only carried oil for the trust at specially low rates, but at times paid to the trust the cash taken from its rivals in the shape of exorbitant rates. Advantaged by such plunder as this, the progress of the trust to colossal wealth was rapid; competition with it became impossible; and, passing from the carriage and refining of oil to production, it is now in possession of the principal oil fields of America. With the true genius of conquest it soon discarded the railroads for pipe lines, building these with the capital placed in its coffers by the railroads themselves; and if, as the more economical mode of transportation, the pipe lines were inevitable, it is still true that their introduction was hastened by the suicidal treachery of the railroad chieftains.
It is an everyday assumption that direct pecuniary interest is an efficient check upon the wastes and frauds of servants. This assumption is contradicted in every page of the history of the Standard Oil Trust. Through supineness or through the bribery of leading representatives the stockholders of the railroads concerned have been absolutely indifferent to the wholesale and repeatedly exposed theft of their property. In two notable instances—in Columbus, Miss., and in Toledo, Ohio—the communities withstood the trust manfully and succeeded. These two cases are the only ones of importance where, by trusting each other, the members of American communities have managed to preserve industrial freedom threatened by the trust.
Mr. Lloyd has no remedy to suggest for the abuses he describes with so much passionate force. He looks only to arousing public indignation by a simple recital of the facts.
A Journey in Other Worlds. By John Jacob Astor. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 476. Price, $1.50.
There are always some members of a community who, like Grant Allen, prefer their science dry; but there are also others, it is impossible to judge how large this class may be, that like scientific truths flavored and put up in palatable packages. To please the latter is manifestly the purpose of this book. The aim to arouse interest in the wonders of Nature is a worthy one, and, on Jesuitical principles, it may be allowable to give hypodermic injections of science, but the sine qua non of all this is that pure science only should be thus instilled, for if facts be diluted with flights of fancy the recipient may in the end fail to recognize what is truth and what is not.
In the romance before us we are introduced to the world in the year 2000, and to the office of a company whose business it is to straighten the axis of the earth. This it endeavors to do by shifting the superfluous weight of water from the pole nearest the sea to the one leaving it. The Arctic Ocean is alternately pumped out and replenished, the power being furnished by dynamos at Niagara and the Bay of Fundy. On the Antarctic continent the crust is thin, so energy is obtained from sunken boilers which supply superheated steam from the earth's interior.
Several friends "tired of being stuck to this cosmical speck with its monotonous ​ocean, leaden sky, and single moon," attempt a journey to Jupiter in the Callisto, a cylindrical car made with double sides of glucinum. It is protected against the intense cold of space by an interlining of mineral wool and charged with apergy, the opposite of gravitation. It is consequently repelled from the earth's surface until attracted by Mars and Jupiter, when the charge is tempered to prevent annihilation. The average speed of the ship is three hundred and eighty miles a second.
The celestial voyage is an interesting lesson in astronomy. The travelers enjoy a near view of our moon, go within ten miles of the satellites of Mars, pass through the nucleus of a comet, approach various asteroids, and finally, in a little short of twelve days, land upon Jupiter. The state of development there corresponds to the Carboniferous age upon earth. The explorers breakfast upon mammoth, while all about them are known and unknown monsters, turtles, tortoises, and jellyfish. The flowers through contraction of their fibers sing at sunset and attract the birds; but gigantic ants thirty feet long trouble the newcomers, and after a brief survey of Jupiter they depart for Saturn. There they meet spirits who materialize and tell them of many unknown laws of Nature, explaining the process of building a body from the elements. Through the services of one of these, Ayrault visits the earth in spirit form, and concludes that he would rather resume his terrestrial shape and return to our insignificant planet. Shortly after, the Callisto leaves Saturn and the adventurers are restored to earth.
The book is well illustrated, and perchance may prove to be a bypath to science.
Law and Theory in Chemistry. By Douglas Carnegie, M. A. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 222. Price, $1.50.
This book contains the substance of a course of lectures delivered before an audience of teachers of elementary chemistry in a summer school at Colorado Springs. Seven subjects are treated, namely: The birth of scientific chemistry, the phlogistic period, chemical classification, the atomic theory, kinds of compounds, molecular architecture, and chemical equilibrium. Obviously the volume is not a complete treatise on chemical theory or any division of it, and the author offers it as a "companion book" for students who wish "to recapitulate and coordinate the more important principles of chemistry before proceeding to more detailed and advanced works." The author has selected for attention those essential topics which are treated inadequately or not at all in current text-books, or which present especial difficulties to the student. He has aimed to show these topics in their proper perspective, and to point out the trend of modern research with respect to them.
A Dictionary of Electrical Words, Terms, and Phrases. By Edwin J. Houston, A. M., Ph. D. Third edition. New York: The W. J. Johnston Company, Limited. Pp. 667. Price, $5.
If a special dictionary is needed for any branch of science it certainly is for electricity. Electrical matters have a side of interest for the scientist, the business man, the mechanic, and for numerous users of electrical appliances. Moreover, the phenomena of electricity are so manifold and so peculiar, and the apparatus for exhibiting or utilizing them exists in such great variety, that a large vocabulary of electrical terms has necessarily arisen. This vocabulary, furthermore, is rapidly growing with the growth of electrical science, so that it can not be mastered without competent assistance. Such assistance Prof. Houston undertook to supply in 1889, when the first edition of this dictionary was issued. He and his publishers have spared no pains to keep up with the growth of the electrical vocabulary since that time, by issuing a second and a third enlarged edition. The present edition, which follows the second after an interval of scarcely two years, has been increased by twenty per cent, the additions being inserted as an appendix. Prof. Houston's dictionary deserves the term cyclopedic, for not only are the words and phrases carefully defined, but the nature or construction of the thing defined and the electrical principles applying to it are set forth, while a great many pieces of apparatus are figured, and many processes are illustrated by diagrams. There are five hundred and eighty-two illustrations in the volume, and over six thousand words, terms, and ​phrases are defined. Where there are several possible catch-words in a phrase, cross-references from the others to the one under which the phrase is defined are liberally inserted. The mechanical execution of the book is of a high grade.
The Evolution of Woman. By Eliza Burt Gamble. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 356. Price, $1.50.
This work shows considerable research and careful collating of testimony, but is much stronger historically than scientifically. The title is a misnomer. Not even an attempt is made to show the evolution of woman, or of the special aptitudes with which the author endows her. When once she appears upon the scene her development is dropped and only her relationship with man is discussed. The book might be more aptly called The Rise and Fall of Woman, with a Prophecy of her Renaissance. Beginning with an account of the earliest forms of life and proceeding to sex differentiation, the author attempts to prove that the female organization is generally superior to the male throughout the organic world. Among bees, aphides, and tadpoles it has been noted that abundant nutrition, light, and moisture result in females, while unfavorable conditions give rise to males. Among plants staminate flowers of)en first, and "the larch bears female blossoms in its luxurious stage; but as soon as its vigor is lost, male flowers appear." In the human race, more boys are born after epidemics, wars, and famine. The masculine element is, however, not only conditioned upon starvation, but cases of reversion and abnormities are much more numerous with men, while their liability to defective sight and color-blindness indicates that the male power of vision is deteriorating. The author denies that the earlier races of men lived in promiscuity and lawlessness, and deems it more probable that, as among birds and mammals, the females were courted and held in honor. Subsequently kinship was reckoned through the mother and a system of matriarchy established. The prevalence of the gens and early supremacy of woman is attested by the feminine names given to tribes and countries as well as by customs and allusions in historic periods. The author has bestowed great care upon this part of her argument, and it furnishes a plausible explanation of wife-capture and divers obscure wedding rites.
The origin of marriage is described in no gentle terms, the existence of love being ignored. The early Grecian state is well depicted, and an excellent picture is given of Spartan and Athenian women. The change in the position of woman from her status under early Roman law to that under the Antonines, when the influence of Stoic philosophy was felt, is also well brought out. With the conclusion as well as with various assertions scattered throughout the book it is impossible to agree. Some are contrary to observed and verified facts, and one premise has neither scientific authority to support it nor any evidence furnished in its favor—i. e., that the higher faculties are transmitted through the female. It may safely be said that there is no embryologist or biologist so rash as to claim that one parent transmits certain qualities exclusively. Neither would any student of human nature affirm that passion or affection was monopolized by either sex. As to maternal love, we do not know whether or not it is "divine, uncreated," but we do know that paternal love is also a primary instinct, not only strong in mankind, but found among birds and fishes. All parental love, however, is a consequent, and it may be noticed that hyperexaltation of it often follows thwarting or lack of sexual love which is its natural antecedent.
Twelfth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1890-'91. By J. W. Powell, Director. Part I, Geology, pp. 675, with Map; Part II, Irrigation, pp. 576. Washington: Government Printing Office.
During the year covered by the geological report topographical work was carried on by the survey in twenty-seven States and Territories, and an area of 44,100 square miles was surveyed and mapped. Geological work went on on the two lines of the areal distribution of formations and of the study in field and office of various problems in rock structure and history. New work was instituted upon the mineral phosphates of Florida, and in co-operation of the State and national surveys in New Jersey. ​Paleontological work was carried on on the two lines of the identification and correlation of geological formations by the organic remains contained in them, and of the study, from a biological point of view, of the faunas and floras contained in the rock for the purpose of obtaining a critical knowledge of the genera and species, and of the evolution of life and its relations to the environment during geological time. In the division of chemistry and physics a series of valuable measures of earth temperatures was obtained in a dry well four thousand five hundred feet deep at Wheeling, W. Va. Accompanying the report are papers on the Origin and Nature of Soils, by Prof. Shaler; the Lafayette Formation (or the Atlantic Coastal Plain), by W J McGee; the North American Continent during Cambrian Time, by C. D. Walcott; and the Eruptive Rocks of Electric Peak and Sepulchre Mountain, Yellowstone National Park, by J. P. Iddings.
The irrigation survey embraces two divisions of primary importance, and a third, of more immediate apparent utility, dependent upon them. First is the systematic mapping of the arid regions; the second division consists of measurements of the amount of water flowing in the most important streams and computations of the quantity available each day of the year, either for immediate irrigation or for storage purposes; and the third division consists of engineering examinations of such localities as the knowledge of the topography and of the water supply seemed to indicate as favorable for great irrigation development 3. The results of the third year's work of the survey, except the topographical maps which are issued from time to time, are shown in this report, which gives a description of 147 reservoir sites surveyed and reported for segregation, with the hydrographical data, fully illustrated by diagrams. The report is accompanied by a description, by Mr. Herbert M. Wilson, of the irrigation works of India as a practical example of irrigation engineering. The total area of land segregated for the 147 reservoirs—33 in California, 46 in Colorado, 27 in Montana, 39 in New Mexico, and 2 in Nevada—is 165,932 acres, which will afford a water surface, should all the reservoirs be filled to the height designated in the segregations, of 108,350 acres, and would be capable of supplying about a million and a half acres of cultivated land. A caution is given to the effect that the oscillations of water supply from year to year are so great that measurements made in any one year must be looked upon with distrust if large interests are at stake.
Race and Language. By André Lefèvre, Professor in the Anthropological School, Paris. The International Scientific Series, Volume LXXII. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 424. Price, $1.50.
Wherever the several races of man have spread they have carried their respective languages, so that discoveries concerning the distribution of peoples throw light upon the history of language and vice versa. Hence there is much advantage in considering race and language together as is done in this book. The author finds in the history of language abundant traces of evolution, starting from inarticulate cries and passing through the syllabic, agglutinative, and inflected stages to the highest stage—the analytic. Certain languages have stopped on the lower planes of development and the people who speak them are, for the most part, those who have not gone forward in civilization nor spread out from their early homes over other lands. Thus, while inflected languages, and especially the Indo-European family, have been widely diffused, the agglutinative tongues have retreated to the borders of the civilized world. Taking up each class of languages in turn, the author passes in review the monosyllabic group of the extreme East, the agglutinative idioms of Central and Southern Asia, the Malayo-Polynesian and the African languages, telling something about the peoples by whom each is employed. The literature, rudimentary in several cases, of each group is also described. Thus we learn that the genius of the Malay is less suited to moral treatises than to tales and legendary histories. The most original contribution of the people of the Sunda Islands to literature is their popular poetry, and their kinsmen, the Polynesians, share their gift of poetical improvisation. After the African a class of agglutinative languages which the author calls polysynthetic is discussed. This class includes Basque and Eskimo, Algonkin and Iroquois, Nahuatl and Ketchua. ​Passing to inflected and analytic tongues, the history of the Semites and the Indo-Europeans and their several languages is sketched. The rest of the volume—seven chapters—is devoted to a more detailed survey of the Indo-European family, its roots, parts of speech, compounds, and its phonetics being separately discussed. In the closing chapter the chief events in the history of the English and French languages are noted.
Practical Lessons in Physical Measurement. By Alfred Earl, M. A. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 350. Price, $1.25 net.
Believing that a training in physical measurement is the most solid basis of scientific knowledge, the author has prepared this book as a laboratory manual for an introductory course of study in science. It is devoted to simple measurements of length, mass, and time, and care has been taken to make the course logically progressive. The author hopes also that the book may serve in some degree to bridge over the space between the laboratory and other class rooms by acting as a "practical arithmetic," and to some extent as a "practical grammar." A large number of exercises on each variety of measurement are given, and the general character of the course is promising for thorough results.
In The Care and Feeding of Children (Appleton & Co., 50 cents) Dr. Emmett Holt offers a guide to mothers and nurses in the form of a catechism. The questions and answers were first prepared for the instruction of nursery maids, and pertain to the proper oversight of babies from a few days old to as many years. The directions have the merit of precision and of brevity; and, while many of the precautions are needless for healthy children, no harm can come in any case from following the rules given for infants over a year old.
As usual with books of its kind, the importance of rearing babies naturally is not sufficiently emphasized, and several suggestions tend to defeat such nurture. Patented foods are, however, rigorously condemned with reason, and this is perhaps more than might be expected, even of a doctor, in an artificial age.
The American Historical Register is a new periodical, begun with the September number, 1894, as a monthly gazette of the patriotic societies of our country, with Charles H. Browning as editor in chief and a number of men and women representing the patriotic societies as associate editors. It is intended to be generally historical, biographical, and genealogical in its scope, and to be a literary exchange and repository for American historical students. The first number contains an account of the work of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, and articles on the Hillegas family, the Daughters of Liberty; Major William Dyce, of New York; Stories of Colonial Families; General James Taylor, of Kentucky; General William Henry Harrison, Major George Croghan, and the Medal of Honor Legion. (Published at Philadelphia.)
A Laboratory Manual of Physics and Applied Electricity has been arranged and edited by Prof. Edward L. Nichols, from his own work and that of his associates in the department of physics in Cornell University, to supply in some measure the needs of a modern laboratory, in which the existing manuals of physics have been found inadequate. The author has thought best in it to encourage continual reference by the student to other works and to original sources rather than to provide a complete and sufficient source of information. The first volume, now before us, embraces a junior course in general physics, and has been especially prepared by Ernest Merritt and Frederick J. Rogers. It is the outgrowth of a system of junior instruction that has been gradually developed during a quarter of a century, and affords explicit directions, together with demonstrations and occasional elementary statements of principles. (Published by Macmillan & Co. Price, $3.)
The fifth Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden, for 1893, represents the financial condition of the trust as sound and the garden as kept in good condition. The trustees are able to carry forward a surplus of $14,649. The additions to the herbarium during the year consisted mainly of current American collections. As now arranged, the herbarium contains the Engelmann collection of 98,000 specimens of all groups; the general herbarium of higher plants, 108,000 specimens; ​and the collection of thallophytes, 16,420 specimens, making in all about 222,420 specimens. It also has received considerable collections of wood wedges, thin veneers of woods mounted as transparencies, and the set, so far as issued, of Prof. Nördlinger's sections. The scientific papers published in the report comprise a study of the Venation of Willows, by Dr. N. M. Glatfelter; Material for a Monograph on the Tan Woods, by J. Christian Bay; The Sugar Maples, with a winter synopsis of all North American Maples, by Dr. Trelease; Notes on a List of Plants collected in Southeastern Missouri, by B. F. Bush: and some papers of a more special and technical character by Dr. Trelease and J. C. Whitten.
A posthumous work by M. A. de Quatrefages, entitled Les Émules de Darwin (the Rivals of Darwin), is published by Félix Alcan, Paris, in two volumes. In it the learned author, after examining the work of Darwin and his French predecessors, passes in review the conceptions of those who were his rivals—or perhaps we might better say his co-workers—in bringing the new doctrines to the attention of naturalists, or in trying to perfect the doctrine of the master. These émules are Alfred Russel Wallace, M. Naudin, Mr. Romanes, Carl Vogt, Felippi, Haeckel, Huxley, Owen, Mivart, Gubler and Koelliker, D'Omalius d'Halloy, and Erasmus Darwin, of whose work full reviews and as "impartial as possible" are given. From this examination the author receives but one impression—that of our impotence to resolve the great problem which so many eminent men have attacked in vain. This review is preceded by a preface by M. Edmond Perrier, in which the work of Quatrefages is summarized at length, and by a eulogy or address on his life and labors, delivered by M. E. T. Hamy at the opening of the course in anthropology of the Museum of Natural History, Paris, in May, 1892. These biographical notices occupy about half of the first volume.
The Annual Report of the United States National Museum for the year ending June 30, 1802, gives the number of specimens in the collections as at that time 3,223,941, showing that in ten years from what was practically the date of occupancy of the museum building the collections had increased sixteen fold. The institution is crowded for space, and will soon be compelled, unless it is relieved, to discourage rather than seek additions. It has already lost several large and important collections on this account. Besides the reports of the assistant secretary in charge. Dr. G. Brown Goode, and of the curators of the several departments, the volume contains papers on Japanese Woodcutting and Woodcut Printing, by T. Tokuno; the Relation of Biology to Geological Investigation, by Charles A. White; Scientific Taxidermy for Museums, by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt; The Shofar, by Cyrus Adler; The Crump Burial Cave, by Frank Burns; Minute Stone Implements from India, by Thomas Wilson; and Comparative Oölogy of North American Birds, by Dr. Shufeldt, with a bibliography and list of accessions.
In A Study of Certain Figures in a Maya Codex, Mr. J. Walter Fewkes takes up a peculiar figure in the Codex Cartesianus, which is known as that of the "long-nosed god," and inquires into its meaning. A relationship is traced with the rain god, and certain features in the arrangement of the figures are supposed to represent the four world-quarter symbols.
The students of Leland Stanford Junior University should have a thoroughly intelligent appreciation of the functions of law and development in Nature if they properly digest the course of lectures on Factors in Organic Evolution given by President Jordan with the assistance of some of the other professors. This we can infer from the syllabus, which comes to us as a volume of one hundred and forty-nine pages printed on one side of the paper, and gives the subheads treated in each of the fifty-eight lectures. The scope of the course may be gathered from the following subjects of some of the lectures: The Unrolling of the Universe; Heredity: the Great Conservative Force in Evolution; The Meaning of Sex; Ontogeny and Phylogeny; The Origin of the Eye; Law of Self-activity; Evolution of Plants; The Way out of Pessimism; The Fool-killer and his Mission; The Evolution of the Idea of God; and The Evolution of the Common Man. A list of books recommended for reading is added.
The eleventh volume of the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission for 1891 contains papers on A Reconnaissance of the ​Streams and Lakes of Western Montana and Northwestern Wyoming, by Barton W. Evermann; a report of Investigations made in Texas in 1891, by the same author; A Statistical Report on the Fisheries of the Gulf States, by J. W. Collins and Hugh M. Smith; Report on a Collection of Fishes from the Albemarle Region of North Carolina, by Hugh M. Smith; The Spawning Habits of the Shad, by S. G. Worth; A Preliminary Report on the Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna of the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, and the Flathead Region of Montana, by S. A. Forbes; Notes on a Collection of Fishes from the Southern Tributaries of the Cumberland River in Kentucky and Tennessee, by Philip H. Kirsch; Report on the Fisheries of the South Atlantic States, by Hugh M. Smith; Report on the European Methods of Oyster Culture, by Bashford Dean; and The Classification of the Myxosporidia, a group of protozoan parasites infesting fishes, by R. R. Gurley.