Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/429

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LITERARY NOTICES.
415

cis K. Kane, architects. The publishers assert that being architects they are prepared to back up every profession made in the work; and that the costs of construction furnished may be relied upon. "Even in far distant places and after the lapse of years," they say, "we can still make the prices good by some change in construction or material when making the working plans and specifications." This on condition, of course, that their working plans and specifications are obtained, for which they make a special charge of from $12 to $60, according to the character of the design.

My Farm of Edgewood. By the author of "Reveries of a Bachelor." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 329. Price, $1.25.

"My Farm of Edgewood" is, reckoning from the day of its first appearance, twenty-one years old; but it is not an old book. The world has seen changes since it was first published. American suburban life is very different from what it was then. Agriculture has made advances, and science has been revolutionized in some of its branches. But "My Farm" is as fresh and as timely as was the first copy damp from the press; and it seems destined to live a classic. It is a pastoral, a picture of an ideal life, which is also real, seen as with a poet's eye; while, on the other side, it gives a correct vision of farm-life with its bright and dark features, abounds in graphic social sketches, and is so permeated by common sense that its suggestions are capable of being made practically applicable to the concerns of common life.

Forestry in the Mining Districts of the Ural Mountains in Eastern Russia. Compiled by John Croumbie Brown, LL. D. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; Montreal: Dawson Brothers. Pp. 182.

The plan of this treatise is not essentially different from the plans of the author's previous works on the forestry of the different European states. It divides itself into two parts—forestry west and forestry east of the Ural Mountains. In the second section, besides the condition of the forests and forest exploitation, information is given on the mining enterprises of the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains. In a curious chapter on "Abuses in Connection with the Exploitation of the Forests," revelations appear of the corruptibility of the Russian officers, and of the tricks to which they resort to enrich themselves without seeming to take bribes.

Comprehensive Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. By John C. Cutter. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. Pp. 376.

The author of this work, which is adapted for schools, academies, colleges, and families, is professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in the Imperial College of Agriculture at Sapporo, Japan. In the instruction of his pupils, whose knowledge of English was not perfect, he was led to depend less upon the text-book and more upon dissections before the class, and upon demonstrations from an active coolie, and from microscopic preparations; and his book has grown up out of this method of teaching. It contains, together with the outlines of the principles of the science, brief directions for illustrative dissections of mammals, for elementary work with the microscope, for physiological demonstrations on the human body, and for the management of emergent cases. The effects of stimulants are treated without bias in the chapter on that subject. The effort is made to give all the information a practical direction.

N. W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual. Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer & Son. Pp. 994. Price, $3.

The "Annual" contains a carefully prepared list of all newspapers and periodicals published in the United States, the Territories, and the Dominion of Canada, with information respecting them and concerning the character, population, politics, resources, manufactures, and products of the places in which they are published, classified, arranged, and rearranged, in various ways. An idea of the composite character of our population is conveyed by the presence in the lists of nearly five double-columned pages of titles of German publications, not quite a page of French, 53 Scandinavian, 35 Spanish and Portuguese, 12 Bohemian, 11 Hollandish, 1 Italian, 3 Polish, 5 Welsh, one Irish, one Latin, and one Hungarian periodicals.