fore done a most valuable service to science-teaching by preparing this little manual, which is admirably fitted to lay the foundation of an actual and thorough knowledge of the science. His experiments are ingeniously simple, and at the same time telling—each one carrying the pupil along a step further in his progress. The text is clear, pointed, compressed, and attractive, as Prof. Tyndall knows so well how to make it. But it is almost superfluous to call the attention of our readers to the excellences of this little work, as several portions of the earlier English edition have been already published in the pages of this Monthly.
Philosophical Discussions. By Chauncey Wright. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author by Charles Eliot Norton. New York: Henry Holt & Co Pp. 434. Price, $3.50.
This volume opens with a very pleasant and appreciative sketch of Mr. Wright by his friend Charles Eliot Norton, from which we gather that he was a gentleman of admirable personal traits which strongly attracted all who knew him. The book is made up of his literary remains, consisting of nearly a score of articles, contributed chiefly to the pages of the North American Review and to the Nation for the last fifteen years. They evince the strength of an able and independent thinker; but the style in which they are written is somewhat heavy. They are predominantly critical and controversial, as the author does not seem to have arrived at any constructive or systematic views of his own. He highly appreciated Mr. Darwin, and championed him against the criticisms of Prof. St. George Mivart, doing the work so well that it was thought important to republish it in London. There are many things in the articles of Mr. Wright that are well worth preserving, and his friends could in no way have better honored his memory than by collecting and publishing them in the elegant and substantial form which Mr. Holt has given to the volume. It should be mentioned that two of the papers, a fragment on "Cause and Effect," and the beginning of the article on Lewes's "Problems of Life and Mind," are published in this collection for the first time.
Russia. By D. Mackenzie Wallace, M. A. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pg. 620. Price, $4.
As the eyes of observers of international affairs are now turned upon Russia, there will be an increasing interest in all that relates to the domestic and social structure of that powerful empire. It is very rare that, at such a crisis of curiosity, there appears a work so eminently suited to satisfy it as in the present issue of Mr. Wallace's volume. It is a book that would make a mark and a sensation at any time, but the circumstances will now make it "the book of the season." Its author for the past six years has occupied himself with studying the people, the resources, and the institutions of Russia by personal observation and careful inquiry, residing in various cities and villages in different parts of the country, most favorable to varied and enlarged familiarity with the facts of which he was in pursuit. Mr. Wallace's book is written in good style, with no ambition for mere effect, but in the direct, common-sense way of a writer who has much to say, and goes directly to the point. His descriptions are graphic, without being wearisome, and the treatment of his special topics, though often full, occupies the reader closely to the end. It is full of important information, much of which is fresh and novel, in regard to the condition of the country, its peasant-life, the village communities, the larger towns and mercantile classes, imperial administration and local self-government, land proprietorship, the nobility, education, religion, church and state, military characteristics, emancipation of the serfs, the law-courts, the railroad system, social classes, industrial resources, the features of the country, and lastly, in the thirty-fourth chapter, the Eastern question, and the problem of territorial expansion. All these important subjects Mr. Wallace has handled with skill, and with constant reference to the great liberalizing tendencies of the age which are displayed in Russia as well as other leading countries, and under remarkable and peculiar conditions. Prefixed to the volume are two colored maps of Russia, one showing the density and distribution of the population, the railway system, and the grade of cities in respect to the number of their inhabitants; the other ex-
