phraseology that only graduates of scientific schools can understand. Such explanations as the above should be multiplied.
A pamphlet with the title Ethereal Matter; Electricity and Akasa, has been made by Nils Kolkin, consisting of extracts from two books by the same author (J. M. Pinckney Co., Sioux City, Iowa, fifty cents). The subjects treated are the less known forces of Nature and various hypothetical substances, and the pamphlet will doubtless have interest for those who enjoy excursions into the unexplored domain of physics.
A stirring and practical address on The Teacher as he should be, delivered by C. W. Bardeen in July, 1891, has been published in a pamphlet (Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.). The drift of the address is that personality is of far more importance in a teacher than pedantically accurate knowledge on every subject.
A weekly magazine, called Railway Law and Legislation, and conducted by W. P. Canaday and G. B. West, began to appear in September, 1891 (712 Tenth Street, N.W., Washington, D. C, $3 a year). It is concerned with legislation, litigation, and financial and economic developments affecting common carriers. The first article is a historical sketch of The Nicaragua Canal Project. Other subjects treated are Canadian Competition and Discrimination, The Postal Telegraph Bill, The Coming Committees (a forecast), and various minor matters mentioned in notes.
Among the Miscellaneous Documents of the Fifty-first Congress was one entitled Postal Savings-Banks; an Argument in their Favor by the Postmaster-General. The reasons for adding the function of savings banks to the post-offices are set forth in a communication of fifteen pages, and an appendix of seventy-two pages contains a proposed bill to establish postal savings-banks, details of such systems of banks in other countries, opinions of previous postmasters-general, a large number of press comments concerning postal savings-banks, and some minor exhibits.
The first number of a quarterly magazine, devoted to matters of interest to inhabitants of Kansas, was published at Salina, Kan., July, 1891 (C. B. Kirtland Publishing Company, $1 a year). It is called The Agora, and the contents of its first number include The Kansas "Mulligrub," by Hon. William A. Phillips; Imagination in Science, by Prof. L. E. Sayre; A New Sociology, by Rev. E. C. Ray, D. D.; "Bleeding Kansas," by Prof. J. W. D. Anderson; besides other articles, poetry, and book notices.
An Introductory French Reader, the object of which is to prepare the pupil in the shortest possible time to read French easily, has been prepared by William Dwight Whitney and M. P. Whitney, and is published by Henry Holt & Co. and F. W. Christern. The exercises have been selected, with this end in view, from the works of the best-known French authors, choosing such passages as are simple enough to present little difficulty in translation, and so varied and interesting as to rouse and hold attention. A full vocabulary, in which the ordinary idiomatic phrases and expressions in the text are explained, and a table of irregular verbs are added; while the grammatical difficulties and a few literary and historical points are treated in the notes. (Price, 70 cents.)
The A B C of the Swedish System of Educational Gymnastics is a practical handbook for teaching the subject, prepared by Hartvig Nissen, an experienced teacher of the exercise in the public schools of Boston, and published by F. A. Davis, Philadelphia. The first two chapters contain such questions as have been frequently put to the author, the answers to which give a satisfactory idea of the foundation of the system. Other chapters contain prescriptions for daily lessons, arranged for school classes of different grades. Full instructions and commands are given for each lesson, and the whole is illustrated by seventy-seven engravings. (Price, 75 cents.)
Mr. Thomas Bertrand Branson's little manual of Colloquial German is designed to be a drill-book in conversation for school classes or self-instruction, and is intended to offer in convenient form a short course in that art and in German composition. It contains exercises in ordinary English conversation, which the student is expected to turn into German, to aid him in doing which a vocabulary, a summary of grammar, and a list of the irregular verbs arc added. (Published by Henry Holt & Co. Price, 65 cents.)
