and Sarah for the same reason, though still earlier, joined the Society of Friends. Both left Charleston and went to Philadelphia, where Angelina also became a Quaker. Hut after years of trial they withdrew also from the Friends' organization, for the same reason that it did not enter heartily into the rising movement for emancipation. Breaking away from all these restraints, they came out openly as Abolitionists, and devoted themselves with great zeal and efficiency to the propagation of antislavery views. They wrote much and forcibly, and at length took the field as speakers in Massachusetts with remarkable effect. They were both eminently qualified for this sphere of labor, but Angelina, the younger, had extraordinary accomplishments as an orator, and her lectures were attended by crowds of admiring listeners, although the appearance of women in the public lecture-field was at that time a novelty, and strenuously resisted by all conservative people.
Slavery is now gone, and a new generation has come upon the stage which knows little of the intensity of the struggle which led to its extinction, and the furious and maddened resistance encountered by its assailants; but in the records of that experience the names of the Grimké sisters will ever have an honorable and permanent place. Of their various efforts in other directions of social reform, their personalities, and their interesting private lives, we can not here speak, but must refer the reader to the memorial volume, which has been executed with fidelity and discriminating fairness by a loving friend. It will be sincerely welcomed by all who knew them, and will be found full of instructive interest by all who have an appreciation of strong, elevated, and heroic character.
State Agricultural Experiment Station, Amherst, Mass. Second Annual Report. 1884. C. A. Goessmann, Director. Pp. 166.
The varied contents of this report, and the fullness with which the experiments are described, testify to a year of busy work. Among the subjects of the experiments were commercial fertilizers, the specific action of different forms of potassa, the effect of fertilizers on fruit-trees, various leguminous forage-plants, injurious insects, the vitality of seeds, ensilage, foods, analyses of milk, testing of drinking-waters, feeding-experiments with milch-cows and pigs, etc.
Placer Mines and Mining-Ditches. By Albert Williams, Jr. Pp. 64.
This monograph was prepared to form a part of the census report on the statistics and technology of the precious metals. Placer mines, according to the author's statement, have the advantages of being usually more accessible and nearer to thickly settled and agricultural districts than the quartz mining districts, and of not requiring so large an amount of material for their working as quartz mines. The secondary nature of the gravel deposits in which they occur implies an average lower altitude than that of the quartz veins, from which they are derived by erosion. It is a fact that they occur at all altitudes up to 10,000 feet, the elevation of the placer in Alma township. Park County, Colorado. The average height of those mentioned in this report is more than 3,400 feet above the sea-level, while the average height of those in California, beach-sands excepted, is 2,600 feet. The total nominal capital of thirty-six placer mines is $35,115,000, or an average of $975,117 each, while the average par value of their shares is about $14.68. The placer mines being largely worked by the hydraulic method, the question of water-supply is an important one with them, and extensive ditching-works have been executed to secure water. Mr. Williams has reports of 10,783 miles of ditch-lines, which have a maximum capacity of 7,560,000 gallons per twenty-four hours, which cost for plant, excluding cost of water-rights, $27,066,942, and are maintained at an annual expense of $637,280.
The Influence of the Proprietors in Founding the State of New Jersey. By Austin Scott. Baltimore: N. Murray. Pp. 26.
This is a study in the Johns Hopkins University Historical Series, by the Professor of History in Rutgers College, of the course of the development of the fundamental institutions of New Jersey from the régime laid down by the original proprietors.
