across the Atlantic Ocean? how are cars on electric railroads worked? and under what conditions can a fatal shock of electricity be received? The text is illustrated with twenty-nine figures.
The Story of our Continent. By N. S. Shaler. Boston: Ginn & Co. Pp. 290. Price, 85 cents.
The study of the ordinary text-books on geography gives pupils a minute acquaintance with the features of each division of a country, but leaves them without any broad view of the country as a whole, and without any appreciation of the relations of one section to another. This lack with respect to North America Prof. Shaler has aimed to supply by means of a reader in geography and geology telling how this continent grew into its present form, what aboriginal peoples are known to have inhabited North America, how the form of the continent has affected the history of its several groups of colonists, and what are its resources and commercial condition. Comparisons with some features of the Eastern Continent are introduced in the course of the description. The volume is illustrated and has an index.
Part XIX (July, 1891) of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research contains three principal papers, all of which embody reports, confirmed by several witnesses, of so-called psychic phenomena. The first paper, by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, is On Alleged Movements of Objects, without Contact, occurring not in the Presence of a Paid Medium. These movements include the rising of tables from the floor, knockings, ringing of bells, writing on slates, and the moving of chairs and various smaller articles. A record of Experiments in Clairvoyance is contributed by Dr. Alfred Backman, of Kalmar, Sweden. The cases given include seeing ordinary actions at a distance, describing a murderer and his house, describing Christmas presents some days before Christmas that the King of Sweden was to receive, and finding a miniature revolver that had been lost in a field. Dr. Richard Hodgson describes A Case of Double Consciousness occurring in a preacher named Bourne, living in Rhode Island. Mr. Bourne wandered from his home in 1887 and set up a small store in Norristown, Pa., which he kept for six weeks before recovering his identity. Mr. Bourne has been several times hypnotized and questioned by Dr. Hodgson, Prof. James, and Dr. Morton Prince. A supplement contains a Third ad interim Report on the Census of Hallucinations, covering returns received in England and in France, a reply to Mr. A. R. Wallace on Spirit Photographs, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, and two notices of books. Dr. Richard Hodgson, 5 Boylston Place, Boston, is the agent of the society in America.
A laboratory manual has been published by Prof. Delos Fall, of Albion, Mich., under the title An Introduction to Qualitative Chemical Analysis. It is intended to lead students to learn analysis by the inductive method. That this method of study "produces strong, accurate, enthusiastic, and independent students" is attested by the author's experience of several years with it. An introduction contains an outline of the mode of teaching for which the book is adapted; the tests are interspersed with practical hints and with questions that draw the student's attention to the essential features of what he is doing; lists of apparatus and reagents required are given, and also forms for recording the results, which to the student are discoveries.
The Legislature of the new State of Wyoming, in January, 1891, established the Wyoming Experiment Station, which, under date of May, 1891, issued its first Bulletin. This document describes the organization and the proposed work of the station. The arrangements for agricultural experiments include six farms, at altitudes from four thousand to seven thousand feet above sea-level, four fifths of the State being between four thousand and eight thousand feet. All but one of these farms are under irrigation. Special experiments on grasses are also being carried on under the direction of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Bulletin No. 33, New Series, of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station is devoted to fertilizers. It contains one paper that can not be too highly praised; this is an Explanation of Terms of Chemical Analysis. A great part of the literature of agricultural stations is made entirely useless for the farmers that are taxed to pay for it by the use of chemical and other technical
