almost at a single sitting. But these powerful instruments of precision in mental work are absolutely necessary if physics is to be taught for the purpose of mental training.
Professor Trowbridge aims to raise the standard in the elementary study of physical science, and to make its acquisitions of permanent value. He introduces nothing that can ever have to be unlearned. He has selected for experimental and mathematical demonstration the fundamental truths in the several branches of the science of physics, which must endure, however great the future advances may be. If the student masters the treatise, he has a solid foundation upon which all future advances must be based. He has omitted all that can not be considered as fundamental; and any laboratory manual which may be published in the future must include the principal experiments of this text-book.
Its appearance at this time is especially opportune, as it meets something like an emergency in the higher education. It is designed for the use of high schools, and also "preparatory schools for college," and there is just now a vigorous effort to raise the standard of science-study in the period of preparation for college. Here Greek and Latin have had almost exclusive attention, but there is a growing demand for a better pre-collegiate grounding in science. "The New Physics," if properly used, will insure this result. It will give a more valuable discipline than the dead languages; and, while there will be as much hard work as in the grinding of Greek, it will not be repulsive work. By enlisting the active as well as the reflective powers there will be a greater variety of interest in the exercises, so that the course of the student, though arduous, will be pleasurable. It is a fallacy to make disgust at painful study an evidence of its disciplinary value; and one of the great advantages which we may expect from the broader and more liberal pursuit of science studies in the future will be to make education more attractive than it has been in the past.
Hand-Book of the Dominion of Canada. By S. E. Dawson. Montreal: Dawson Brothers. Pp. 335, with Pocket Map.
The "Hand-Book" was prepared for the meeting of the British Association at Montreal, and therefore devotes more attention than is usual in guide-books to the scientific aspects of the country and its economical prospects. Opening with a general account of the Dominion, its physical features, statistics, enterprises of all kinds, and the condition of science, literature, and art within it, it devotes the sections that follow to more full and detailed accounts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, the lower St. Lawrence, the Labrador coast, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia. A geological map of Montreal and its environs is given, in connection with a chapter on that subject.
Excessive Saving a Cause of Commercial Distress. By Uriel H. Crocker. Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth. Pp. 40. Price, 50 cents.
The author of this monograph, which he characterizes as "a series of assaults upon accepted principles of political economy," is a prophet whose efforts have not been appreciated by the press. He is so unfortunate as-to hold views contrary to the fashionable ones, and which, consequently, whether they be well founded or not, can not be admitted to the best places in the paper. The substance of these views is, that if the public refuse to buy goods that are in the market or are making for it, dealers and manufacturers who are dependent on the sale of them must suffer distress which will eventually overtake the whole community. A few of the essays he has written in support of this theory have been published; others have been declined or sent to the waste-basket. All are given in this volume.
Electrical Appliances of the Present Day. By Major D. P. Heap, U. S. A. New York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 287, with Plates.
Major Heap was sent out by the Secretary of War to visit the Electrical Exhibition in Paris in 1881, and collect such information respecting it as would be of interest and value. The exhibition was complete in nearly every detail except in the application of electricity to torpedoes, concerning which the inventors of every nation preferred to keep their own secrets from those of other nations. It was par-
