of the measure proposed would be the employment of a great number of laborers who are now idle. The permanent effects would be most quickly seen in the younger laborers; for, by the application of halftime, "within a single decade every laborer of twenty years of age. . . would have bad five, and many of them seven or eight years' daily contact with the educational, moral, and social influences of school life. It is clear, therefore, that the necessary consequence of the general adoption of the half-time school system alone would be not only to greatly improve and elevate the home, but to almost revolutionize the domestic and social atmosphere of the masses within a single generation." The effects of this system upon wages, production, and prices, on profits, and on rent, are next considered, and declared to be all beneficial. The feasibility of short-hour legislation is shown from the history of the measures in that direction that have been taken in England. The lessons which they teach are drawn from comparative reviews of industrial progress in England, continental countries, and the United States; the eight-hour and half-time system is presented as a social and political necessity; and the conclusion is expressed that if such a system could be uniformly adopted in the principal manufacturing countries, "its effect upon emigration, enforced idleness, business depressions, and upon real wages, together with the growth of intelligence and social character, would in twenty-five years change the face of the industrial and social institutions of Christendom."
We have received from Macmillan an Elementary Chemistry, by Muir and Slater ($1.25), and a Practical Chemistry, by Muir and Carnegie (80 cents), two books, adapted to university students, which are designed to be used together in learning the elements of chemical science. The former volume deals mainly with chemical philosophy, using descriptive matter to show the basis on which the principles of chemistry rest. Its companion embodies a course of laboratory work.
In the third edition of the Manual of Analytical Chemistry, by John Muter (Blakiston, $2), a considerable amount of special matter has been introduced, but, by means of a change in the style of printing, the bulk of the volume has been diminished instead of increased. This manual embraces both qualitative and quantitative analysis, and deals with organic as well as inorganic substances.
Sir William Aitken's little book on the Animal Alkaloids (Blakiston, $1) embodies a lecture delivered before the British Army Medical School, in which he summarizes the recent researches as to the poisonous effect of the leucomaines, and other substances formed within the body by the physiological processes.
The sixth edition of Bloxam's Chemistry has been issued (Blakiston, $4.50). This work includes both organic and inorganic chemistry, and its distinguishing features are its comprehensiveness and the large space it gives to technological applications of chemical principles. The number of experiments introduced is also large. The work has been carefully revised, and a large part of it has been rewritten for this edition. The first edition having appeared when metallurgy was still treated as a branch of chemistry, more space is devoted to it than is usual in modern chemical works. As the author had been for many years before his death, which occurred just after the present book had passed through the press, a professor in the Military Academy at Woolwich, England, the chemistry of the various substances employed in warlike stores is quite fully treated.
Prof. Victor von Richter's Inorganic Chemistry (Blakiston, $2) has reached a third American edition. The present edition contains a rather extended section upon the thermal behavior of bodies, and throughout the work frequent occasion is taken to call attention to the dynamical side of chemical reactions. The sections upon the pressure and condensation of gases, and that upon the dissociation phenomena, have also been considerably increased, while new facts relating to the elements and their derivatives have been introduced.
First Steps in Geometry, by Richard A. Proctor (Longmans, $1.25), differs from the common text-books on this subject in dealing mainly with the methods which the student should follow in finding out for himself solutions to geometrical problems. The
