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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/287

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LITERARY NOTICES.
275

novelties in style or processes. It marks the distinction between cabinet-making and joinery, and between cabinet-making and decoration; gives a review of the development of furniture, in which the tricks and deceits of a class of dealers in pretended antiques are exposed; and then furnishes practical information, with more than two hundred illustrations, concerning the various matters pertaining to cabinet-making—furniture woods, glue, nails, tools, wooden appliances made by the user, grinding and sharpening tools, joints, structural details, construction of parts, drawing, veneering, etc., and the construction of various articles.

Mr. J. Traill Taylor's manual on the Optics of Photography and Photographic Lenses (New York: Macmillan & Co., $1) is practical rather than theoretical, and is intended for the users of photographic lenses. It includes the substance of articles furnished to the photographic journals and photographic clubs of Great Britain. It furnishes brief accounts of the nature and properties of light, the principles on which the use of lenses is based, their defects and the means of remedying them, the different classes of lenses; the methods of preparing, mounting, fitting, and using them; and such other information as the photographer needs respecting them. The author distinguishes the optics of photography from that of the telescope or microscope by showing that the former takes cognizance of rays transmitted obliquely as well as axially, and brings both the chemical and visual rays to a focus on the same plane.

A book, small enough to be carried in the pocket and convenient for reference at any time, entitled American Citizenship and the Right of Suffrage in the United States, has been compiled by Taliesen Evans, and is published by him at Oakland, Cal. It comprises abstracts of national and State laws affecting citizenship and suffrage in the United States, and of such questions relating thereto as have from time to time been passed upon by the courts. The effort has been made to treat the subject in such a way as to make the presentation acceptable and instructive to the American student, and interesting and useful to persons of foreign birth who desire to become citizens and voters. It includes general reviews of the conditions of American citizenship and of the right of suffrage; literal quotations of the constitutional provisions of each of the States concerning the qualifications of voters; a chapter on the qualifications for holding office; and the Constitution of the United States.

The Rev. Emory Miller, D. D., LL. D., apparently endeavors, in a book on the Evolution of Love, to approach the deepest questions of divinity. Superstition, opinion, and discrimination, he says, are three epochal words, of which the first has had its day and the second its noon, while the sun of discrimination is dawning. Casting away superstition, refusing to be bound by opinions, the author tries, he says, honestly and by the method of discrimination, to seek the truth. In this spirit he discusses the Implication of Being as perceived, as conceived, and as conditioned, and finds perfection of Being in perfect love. He next discusses Creation, with the conclusion that it is an indulgence of love's eternal, altruistic spirit; finds the origin of evil in selfishness, and its solution in conditions within which it is held that provide for either its merciful remedy or its self-extinction. The last chapters relate to The Atoning Fact, The Revelation of Atoning Fact, and Eschatology, or the doctrine of "last things." Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Price, $1.50.

The Bureau of Education has issued a Circular of Information on Sanitary Conditions for School-houses, the result of an extended study of this subject by Dr. Albert P. Marble, of Worcester, Mass. This monograph is concerned with practical devices for ventilation and heating, drainage and lighting. Appended to the body of the circular are papers on Ventilation of School-houses heated by Stoves, Hygienic Construction of the Bridgeport High-school Building, Worcester School Buildings, Plans and Specifications of School-houses prepared for the Wisconsin State Bureau of Education, and Designs for School-houses accepted by the Department of Public Instruction of the State of New York. The whole document is copipiously illustrated; the main portion has twenty-three figures in the text and seventy-one plates, showing heating apparatus, the arrangement of ventilating ducts, the course of heated air through rooms, sanitary closets, etc. The appendixes are accompanied by