the best contrivance being stated as the following: It consists of a double coffee-pot, the inner one, containing the coffee and water, being completely surrounded by steam which is generated in a pan or receiver, over which is placed the coffee-pot. In this way all the rich, oily aromas are thoroughly extracted by the action of steam-heat surrounding all parts of the inner vessel. The coffee can never boil, and the result is a beverage more perfect than any percolating, boiling, or straining process has ever produced.
A chapter is devoted to the analysis and adulterations of coffee, and the volume contains a beautiful colored frontispiece representing the coffee-plant, and a map showing its geographical distribution. The work is very neatly gotten up.
The Ten Laws of Health; or, How Disease is produced and can be prevented. By J. R. Black, M.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1872.
In another part of this number of the Monthly, the reader will find an interesting paper from Dr. Black, on "Applied Sanitary Science," in which, after pointing out some of the more formidable difficulties obstructing a general application of sanitary rules, he urges, as the only effective means of making these rules universally available, that every intelligent member of the community master the leading facts and principles of the subject. In this way his eyes will be opened to the dangers which surround him, and the knowledge necessary to their avoidance or removal will also be at hand for practical use. To this important educational work the book before us is a valuable contribution. The author begins by enforcing the proposition, with which most intelligent physicians will doubtless agree, that diseases are, as a rule, preventible; that man brings them upon himself through ignorance and carelessness, and that most of them may be avoided by conforming to certain well-ascertained laws of health. These laws he ranges under ten heads, in the order of their importance, and then considers each in a threefold manner: the various ways in which it is commonly violated are first pointed out; the results which follow are next indicated; and, lastly, comes a description of the ways and means necessary to its proper observance. With some slight exceptions, the matter of the book is eminently sound, and its precepts safe to follow, while the style is clear and vigorous, qualities which, united with the excellence of its mechanical get-up, admirably fit it for popular reading.
Administration of Justice under Military and Martial Law. By Charles M. Clode. London: Murray. New York: Scribner, 1872.
A royal commission in England, some time since, expressed a desire for some such work as the present, and the British War Department have made an acquaintance with military law an essential condition of promotion in the army. It is therefore plain that this work meets a want in England; and, as the United States Army is governed by a code remodelled on the basis of the British Mutiny Act, military men on this side of the Atlantic will probably find these pages valuable for reference.
Lectures on Light. Delivered in the United States, in the Winter of 1872-'73. By Prof. John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S. 196 pages. D. Appleton & Co.
In his address at the farewell banquet, Prof. Tyndall said: "On quitting England, I had no intention of publishing the lectures I have given here, and, except a fragment or two, they were wholly unwritten when I arrived in this city. Since that time, besides lecturing in New York, Brooklyn, and New Haven, the lectures have been written out. No doubt many evidences of the rapidity of their production will appear; but I thought it due to those who listened to them with such unwavering attention, as also to those who wished to hear them, but were unable to do so, to leave them behind me in an authentic form." Many thousands who listened to these lectures, and many more thousands who did not, will be grateful to Prof. Tyndall for having written them out so fully for general perusal. Accompanied as they are with numerous illustrations of apparatus and experiments, and written in the author's vivid and graphic way, they will interest the reader almost as much as they did those who heard them.
These lectures were undoubtedly pre-
