Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/439

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LITERARY NOTICES.
419

gard to the relationship of morphological and physiological details to general principles have been introduced, because the author is convinced that "working hypotheses not only serve to weave apparently isolated facts together, but give a certain vividness and interest to what would otherwise prove too often a bare and lifeless catalogue of data." He has made the botanical aspect of biology predominate over the animal in this book, because he deems the former from its simplicity more suited to elementary study, and because the latter has been abundantly treated by other authors. The book contains 192 cuts.

Among the late "Bulletins" of the United States Geological Survey are No. 40, on Changes in River Courses in Washington Territory due to Glaciation, by Bailey Willis, with maps; No. 41, The Fossil Faunas of the Upper Devonian—the Genesee Section, New York, by Henry S. Williams; No. 42, Report of the Work done in the division of Chemistry and Physics (1885-'86), by F. W. Clarke; No. 43, On the Tertiary and Cretaceous Strata of the Tuscaloosa, Tombigbee, and Alabama Rivers, by Eugene A. Smith and Lawrence C. Johnson; No. 44, Bibliography of North American Geology for 1886, by Nelson H. Barton; No. 45, Present Condition of Knowledge of the Geology of Texas, by Robert T. Hill; No. 46,The Nature and Origin of Deposits of Phosphate of Lime, by R. A. F. Penrose, Jr., with an introduction by Prof. Shaler, and a bibliography; and No 47, Analysis of Waters of the Yellowstone National Park, with an Account of the Methods of Analysis employed, by Frank Austin Gooch and James Edward Whitfeld.

Of two recent geological essays by W J McGee, Notes on the Geology of Macon County, Missouri, embodies the results of a survey which was made preliminary to putting down a prospect bore; and Dynamical Geology relates to certain fundamental definitions growing out of the discrimination of processes commonly confounded but really distinct.

A little manual of Deductive Logic has been issued by St. George Stock, M. A. (Longmans, $1 25). The author remarks in his preface that one critic who examined his book in manuscript advised him not to publish it, because it was too like all other logics, while another advised him to cut out a considerable amount of new matter, lie followed the latter advice, and hopes that he has at least escaped the guilt of wanton innovation. His object has been "to produce a work which should be as thoroughly representative of the present state of the logic of the Oxford schools as any of the text-books of the past." As a qualification for his task, he refers to seventeen years of study and teaching of the subject at Oxford. A collection of exercises is appended. The volume is made in a neat and convenient form.

The most noticeable characteristic of Cram's Standard American Atlas of the World (George F. Cram, New York, $10.50) is its unconventional handiness. On the front cover is an index of the United States, Canada, and Mexico maps, and the pages referred to here and in the full index inside the volume can be readily found, as the leaves are printed on both sides, either with maps or letterpress. The volume contains maps of all the States and Territories of the United States, which, it is stated on the title-page, "are the largest scale and clearest print of any atlas maps published." There are also maps of the various divisions of Canada, the other countries of North America, Europe and its countries, South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the chief island groups of the world, and twenty-two maps of American cities. Each State map is accompanied by an index of its towns and villages, with information in regard to location, population, post offices, railways, etc. At the end of the book are twenty pages of "curiosities of statistics," and six pages of colored statistical diagrams. We have found with very little search a number of errors in its maps and its figures of population.

An American edition of Sonnenschein's Cyclopædia of Education, edited by Alfred E. Fletcher, is published by Bardeen ($3.75) It comprises a wide variety of pedagogical, psychological, historical, descriptive, and biographical articles, by such writers as Oscar Browning J. S. Curwen, James Donaldson, Sir Philip Magnus, David Salmon, Arthur Sidgwick, and James Sully. A bibliography of education, occupying thirty-four pages, is appended.

A History of Education in North Carolina, by Charles Lee Smith, is published by