Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/282

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the northern sea. All the species that pass from east to west seem to be northern forms. Loniæera involucrata, however, crosses the continent from New Brunswick to the sea-level of the Pacific coast. Very few plants whose center of distribution is west of the Rocky Mountains appear in the flora of the East. Pseudotsuga Douglasii comes as far east as longitude 114°; Pinus Murrayana, longitude 110°; Rubus nutkanus reaches Sault Ste. Marie, and Goodyera Menziesii the shores of Lake Ontario.

Some species which in those northern regions bind the floras east and west will interest naturalists generally by reason of peculiarly isolated distribution. Thus, Armeria vulgaris, common on sea-shores around the entire North, is found in profusion on the summit of Mount Albert, Gaspé. Vaccinium ovalifolium, reported in the United States from a single locality on the south shore of Lake Superior, occurs at many stations in the far Northwest and also on the summit of Mount Albert. Galium kamtschaticum, another arctic species, occupies the same interesting locality. Heliotropium curassavicum, characteristic rather of our Southern flora, surprises us by appearing abundantly away north and west of the Saskatchewan.

Six parts will show this excellent catalogue complete. Of these, the four already published are devoted to phenogamous plants exclusively; Part V will present the ferns and mosses; while algæ and fungi are relegated to Part VI.

Handbook of Psychology; Senses and Intellect. By James Mark Baldwin, Ph. D., Professor in Lake Forest University. New York: Henry Holt & Co-1889. 8vo. Pp. 343. Price, $2.26.

In this book the author displays a thorough acquaintance with the works of those writers on the subject whose general philosophical attitude is different from his own, and he often adopts their conclusions, freely recognizing their merits. The references show a wide acquaintance with psychological works in all languages, and are impartially made, with no discrimination in favor of either Trojan or Tyrian, the author evidently intending that the reader shall be made fully acquainted with the literature of the

various topics treated. The work is that of a scholar, the style is good, and many special themes are well handled. This is particularly true of sensation, though the selection of the word tone to characterize the quality of sensation as pleasurable or painful does not seem to us felicitous. So also the chapter on illusions is an excellent presentation in condensed form of a class of very interesting mental phenomena.

But while the author makes good use of the results of scientific psychological study, his work is vitiated by an inability to get rid of the notion that Psychology must be made a servant of Theology. We are reminded by his book of Dr. McCosh's works, though Dr. Baldwin is much less anachronistic. The difficulty is the old heresy that the human mind has a special and higher faculty for seeing things invisible, by a rational or intuitional apprehension. The moment we apply the term intuition alike to presentative knowledge and to representative products concepts, judgments, inferences as does Dr. Baldwin, we destroy the fundamental psychological distinction, and make a jumble of mental science. This is what is always done by those who insist on a "reason" and on "rational intuitions."

We have yet to see any fairer or better handbooks of psychology than Prof. Bain's and Mr. James Sully's, and either of these we should certainly recommend in preference to the present work, which, spite of excellences, is essentially misleading by reason of errors mostly growing out of the above-mentioned confusion.

"The New Review." Edited by Archibald Gove. Monthly. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Price, 15 cents a number, $1.75 a year.

This addition to the number of monthly reviews deserves to be classed with the best. The first number was that for June, 1889, and the issues that have already appeared have been filled with the contributions of able and well-known writers. Being an English magazine, of course it contains some articles that the American reader would skip as being of rather remote interest; but much of its contents knows no nationality, for instance, "After the Play," by Henry James, and "The Dying Drama," a reply by William