and are perfectly competent, not only to know the results obtained, but to understand the principles and methods on which they depend without caring to master all the details of the investigation. I have tried to keep distinct the line between the certain and the conjectural, and to indicate as far as possible the degree of confidence to be placed in data and conclusions."
It is unnecessary further to dilate on the merits of this volume, especially as the readers of "The Popular Science Monthly" are not unacquainted with Professor Young's skill in scientific exposition; nor will it be possible, in any notice, to illustrate the richness of these pages in striking facts, felicitous illustrations, and lucid explanations, concerning the constitution, astronomical relations, and stupendous influence, of the solar body. There is an introduction on "The Sun's Relation to Life and Activity upon the Earth." This is followed by a systematic discussion of the main problems of solar phenomena, in a succession of chapters treating of "The Distance and Dimensions of the Sun," the "Methods and Apparatus for studying the Surface of the Sun," "The Spectroscope and the Solar Spectrum," "Sun-spots on the Solar Surface," "Periodicity of Sun-spots, their Effects upon the Earth, and Theories as to their Cause and Nature," "The Chromosphere and its Prominences," "The Corona," and "The Sun's Light and Heat." The concluding chapter is an excellent "Summary of Facts and Discussion of the Constitution of the Sun." An appendix is added, which has been contributed by Professor Langley, one of the most zealous and successful American cultivators of solar astronomy. It presents certain important views, which this investigator has reached, with regard to the light and heat of the sun.
Professor Young's book is not written in rhyme, and does not profess to be "poetry." Perhaps it is inimical to poetry, as it deals with hard scientific material facts, and, if these are truly incompatible with poetic thought, the book will be open to the maledictions of all who consider error better than truth for the purposes of the poetic mind. But this, at any rate, may be said: no one can read Professor Young's book without recognizing very clearly that the sun, as interpreted by the science of to-day, is a far grander and more impressive object of thought than was the sun of a century or two ago. Milton traversed the universe of his time with intrepid imagination, but what was his conception of the "powerful king of day," compared with the conception of the sun which science has now shown to be true? The poetic imagination has never pictured anything to be compared with the sublimity and unspeakable grandeur of the all-regulating, life-giving star round which we are revolving, and which, so far as the human mind is concerned, science may be said to have created. Has not science, in this and kindred exploits, given a transcendent enlargement to the sphere of the imagination? We do not believe that ignorance is the mother of legitimate devotion or of genuine poetry; and those who think that the truth-seeking faculty in man, which, in a certain aspect, is simply occupied in extending the realm of wonder, and disclosing the beauty, the harmony, and the magnificence of Nature's operations, is the enemy of real poetry, have a good deal yet to learn about the subject. It will damage no sound poet to absorb the contents of Professor Young's book.
Chinese Immigration in its Social and Economical Aspects. By George F. Seward, late United States Minister to China. New York: Scribners. 1881. 8vo. Pp. xv-421. Price, $2.50.
Reserving for a possible future volume the question of "the political and commercial issues" involved in the Chinese question, Mr. Seward limits himself in the present work to its social and economical aspects, as those which are likely to determine the legislative action of the country. These aspects he considers under the following heads: 1. The number of Chinese in the United States; 2. The material results of Chinese labor in California; 3. Objections to Chinese immigration; and, 4. Fears of an overflowing immigration.
And—1. The number of Chinese in this country has been habitually over-estimated by the anti-Chinese partisans. In California it was common to hear it said, a few years ago, that there were "more Chinamen than voters" in that State The facts have
