telegrams, and the supply of water and lighting in towns.
The scope of the author's inquiry in this branch of his subject may perhaps be best indicated by the following extract:
"The legislation of modern civilized communities, then, is, in the main, framed on an individualistic basis; and an important school of political thinkers are of opinion that the coercive interference of government should be strictly limited to the application of this principle. I propose, accordingly, in subsequent chapters, to trace in outline the chief characteristics of the system of law that would result from the consistent application of the individualistic principle to the actual conditions of human life in society. I shall then examine certain difficulties and doubts that arise when we attempt to work out such a consistent and exclusive individualistic system. I shall analyze the cases in which, in my judgment, it tends to be inadequate to produce the attainable maximum of social happiness; and I shall consider to what extent, and under what carefully defined limitations, it is expedient to allow the introduction of paternal and socialistic legislation, with a view to remedy these inadequacies."
In the branch of this subject relating to the structure of a government, Prof. Sidgwick is occupied with a discussion of what he esteems the most desirable relation between the three prime departments of a governmental structure the executive, legislative, and judicial. His discussion is well worth study, and abounds in suggestions of improvements in details as well as in principles of the more prominent features of modern governments.
The Horse. By William Henry Flower, Sc. D., Pres. Z. S., etc. Modern Science Series, No. II. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. xiv + 204. Price, $1.
Prof. Ball's instructive book on The Cause of an Ice Age, which opened the new popular scientific series, edited by Sir John Lubbock, is followed by the present volume, in which the structure of the most interesting of the domestic animals is described. The author begins by defining the horse's place in nature, as indicated by its ancestors, whose fossil remains have been found in considerable abundance, and by its relatives. In the second chapter the horse and its nearest existing relatives are described. These are the Perissodactyle ungulates comprising the three families, tapirs, rhinoceroses, and horses. Of these the tapirs retain more of the primitive characteristics of the common ancestors of the three families than either of the others. Of the tapirs there is but one genus. The rhinoceroses are grouped in three sections or genera the rhinoceros with one horn, the ceratorhinus and the atelodus, each with two. The horses (family Equidæ) comprise the horse proper, the asses, and the zebras. Although wild horses have been abundant in both America and Europe, the nearest approach to a wild horse existing anywhere at present is the tarpan of the steppes in southeastern Russia. The latter half of the volume is devoted to the structure of the horse, chiefly as bearing upon its mode of life, its evolution, and its relation to other animal forms. The bones of the head and neck and the dentition are fully described, and the chief characteristics of the lips, nostrils, and neck are pointed out. In describing the cervical ligament, which is attached like a stay-rope to the neck and to the fore part of the backbone, the author takes occasion to condemn the useless cruelty of the bearing-rein. The fourth and last chapter is devoted to the limbs, and contains an interesting comparison between the arrangement of the bones in the limbs of the horse and in those of man. Twenty-six figures illustrate the text.
Principles of Economics. By Alfred Marshall. Vol. I. Second edition. London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 1891. Pp. 770. Price, $3.
This well-known treatise of Prof. Marshall has undergone but slight changes in the present edition, the more important of which are pointed out by the author in his preface. The work is a general presentation of the science on the general lines laid down by the English economists, but there is to be traced in it the influence of more recent economic thought in modifying the treatment of many problems and altering the weight given to conditions and considerations not strictly economic. As Prof. Marshall points out, the
