upon the subject, brought up to the present time. The book aims to be a sort of "encyclopedia of all that is known on the subject that is permanently important and valuable." Government has done a good deal to explore this subject in the several States, but the ponderous volumes of reports they have published are expensive, inaccessible, and require to be digested in the cheap and popular form of a convenient hand-book. For the benefit of those who have but little knowledge in geology, some general information is given on the origin of coal-beds, and their place among the rocky strata, which is applicable to all the coal-regions. Besides the special descriptions of the coal-resources of each State, there is a chapter on the iron-ores of the coal-measures, one on the combustion of coal, and one giving the latest statistics of coal-mines in the United States and in foreign countries. There is also a very valuable chapter on the conditions of success in the coal-trade. The volume is enriched by a contribution from Prof. Newberry on the coal-strata of Ohio, and the author acknowledges important assistance from Profs. Cox, Worthen, White, and Foster. Mr. Macfarlane's work is altogether of a very practical character, and will form an instructive contribution to the literature of the subject.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. By James Fitzjames Stephen, Q. C. Holt & Williams.
This is a refreshing book, and is bound to set a good many people thinking. Its contents appeared as a series of anonymous essays in the Pall Mall Gazette, and attracted much attention by the forcible manner in which they were written, and the boldness and ability with which they challenged the "liberal tendencies" of English thought. The author takes Mr. Mill as the representative and authoritative expositor of these tendencies, and subjects several of his works to a merciless dissection. Acknowledging his indebtedness to Mr. Mill as the author of the "Logic" and the "Political Economy," he utterly repudiates the doctrines advocated in the "Liberty" and the "Subjection of Woman." The readers of The Popular Science Monthlyhave had a sample of his method in the article on the "Equality of the Sexes," in the March number, in which he criticised Mr. Mill's main positions upon this subject. In the other essays he takes up the prevailing democratic tendencies as embodied in the phrase "liberty, equality, and fraternity," and deals with them in the same unsparing manner. His book is a plea for social restraints, and a protest against those interpretations of liberty which would make it consist in exemption from restraining agencies. Mr. Stephen exercises the largest liberty of criticism, and writes with the fire of a partisan; but his book abounds with fresh and pregnant suggestions, and its wide circulation will exert a wholesome influence in this country
Caliban: The Missing Link. By Daniel Wilson, LL. D. New York: Macmillan & Co.
This volume is another added to the very considerable list of recent books designed to illustrate the omniscience of Shakespeare. Prof. Wilson thinks that he anticipated the modern doctrine of evolution, and in his character of Caliban has delineated the characteristics of the creature Mr. Darwin is in search of, namely, "the missing link between man and beast." The book abounds in extracts from Shakespeare's works, and ingenious interpretations of them, but is vague in its argument, and any thing but satisfactory in its conclusions.
The American Chemist: A Monthly Journal of Theoretical, Analytical, and Technical Chemistry. Edited by Charles F. Chandler, Ph. D., Professor of Analytical and Applied Chemistry in the School of Mines, Columbia College, New York, and Wm. H. Chandler, F. C. S., Professor of Chemistry in the Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. Philadelphia: H. C. Lea.
We have before us vols. i. and ii. (new series) of this valuable monthly, and a careful examination of their contents leads us to recommend it very strongly to public attention. It is edited with skill and judgment, contains a large amount of important information nowhere else so accessible, and deserves a liberal and remunerative patronage. The great science of chemistry, we might almost say, is at the bottom of every
