comprises a series of twenty-three designs for school-buildings, ranging from a loghouse of one room to a brick building of two stories and basement, and containing eight rooms. Each design is accompanied by a general description, in which the lighting, heating, ventilating, and toilet arrangements receive due attention. The text is abundantly illustrated with front and side elevations, floor-plans, and details for doors, fireplaces, transoms, screens, porches, windows, belfries, gates, fences, etc. In all the designs the principle that school-houses should be attractive is insisted on, and their porches with balustrades, the low overhanging roofs, and exterior chimneys of many of them, make the smaller ones look like dwellings, while the large ones have the appearance of libraries or club-houses rather than the severe aspect usually associated with a school-house. Attention is paid to economy withal, especially in the designs for the smaller buildings. The book is very handsomely printed and attractively bound, and deserves a place in the library of every school officer.
Rocks and Soils: Their Origin, Composition, and Characteristics. By Horace E. Stockbridge. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 239. Price, $2.50.
The object of this book is to present what aid the science of geology can furnish to the important art of agriculture. Some sixty pages are devoted to a sketch of the geological history of the earth, and an equal space to rock composition and decomposition. In this second division, the constituents of the most important crystalline and non-crystalline rocks are given, the disintegration of rocks by internal and by external forces is described, and the products of such disintegration are enumerated. The internal agencies mentioned are volcanoes, thermal waters, rock metamorphism, and contraction of the earth's surface manifested in gradual changes of surface-level, in mountain formation, and in earthquakes. The external forces of disintegration are change of temperature, mechanical and chemical action of water, action of the air, and of organic life. The remaining division of the volume deals with the further transformation of the disintegrated rock into soils by the incorporation of organic matter through the agency of plants and animals, with the constituents and characteristics of soils, and with the soil as related to the production of plants. Methods of experimenting with and analyzing soils are described here. An appendix contains tables of percentages of the constituents found in soils, agricultural products and mineral fertilizers, and these are followed by a list of authorities.
A Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States. By David Starr Jordan. Fifth edition. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Pp. 375. Price, $2.50.
The object of this manual is to give to students and collectors a ready means of identifying the vertebrate fauna, including marine species, of the region which it covers, and of recognizing the characters on which the families, genera, and species of these animals are founded. A system of analytical keys has been employed by which differential characters are brought into contrast. The present edition is wholly rewritten, and the order of arrangement is reversed, the lowest forms being placed first. The artificial characters largely used in the first four editions of this work for the analyses of the genera have been for the most part replaced by the less obvious characters on which classification is actually based. The region covered by the manual has been extended, so that it now includes the district north and east of the Ozark Mountains, south of the Laurentian Hills in Canada, north of the southern boundary of Virginia, and east of the Missouri River. In order to keep the boot of moderate size, all descriptions have been made very concise, while synonymy and generally references to authority have been omitted. Prof. Jordan's name is a sufficient guarantee of the reliability of the work.
The Tariff and its Evils. By John II. Allen. ("Questions of the Day." No. LIII.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 122. Price, $1.
In this essay a ship-owner and merchant of long experience combats the theories of the protectionists as formulated by Senator John Sherman in his speech to the Home Market Club of Boston. The author natu-
