1891, by Mr. Harry Hakes, has been published in a convenient pamphlet for the reading of that large class who, "in this hurrying age, will neither purchase, peruse, nor possess the extensive literature pertaining to the discovery of America." It presents a clear and fully adequate statement in brief of the work of Columbus, and of his right to be regarded as the real discoverer of America, of which the author is a strenuous upholder.
A paper on Michigan Flora, prepared for the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Michigan State Board of Agriculture, by W. J. Beal and C. F. Wheeler, has in it an element of surprise. Expecting to find it a formal botanical catalogue, we find instead a series of brief sketches, appealing at once to readers who are of the people, on various aspects of the vegetation of the State. First is an account of the topography of the State and the botanical regions, with lists of the characteristic plants; then a comparison of the trees and shrubs of Michigan with those of the rest of the world, the reason explained why Michigan has so many trees and Great Britain so few, Planting the Roadside and about the Home, Planting a Wild Garden, plants of various habits suitable for cultivation, The Procession of Flowers, timber plants, forage plants, weeds, and so on, till finally, after all the plants have been told about, the formal catalogue is given.
Mr. John Luchsinger contributed to the eighth volume of the Wisconsin Historical Collections a sketch of the Swiss colony of New Glarus, Wis., which attracted much attention, it being the first monograph on the planting of an organized foreign colony in the State. Since that time, thirteen years ago, a healthy popular interest has been awakened in the history of the several foreign groups of the State, and a renewed call has been made for the Luchsinger paper. The account has accordingly been rewritten by the author, who came over a child with the first settlers, and has been prominent in the life of the colony. The present paper, The Planting of the Swiss Colony at New Glarus, Wis., greatly enriched by additional documentary material and brought down to date, is practically a new monograph, drawn from original sources, and of great interest to all students of our composite nationality.
In a paper on The Relation of Philosophy to Psychology and to Physiology, Prof. Joseph Le Conte uses the term philosophy as meaning the science which treats of the activities of free, self-conscious spirit. The various forces, physical or psychical, are regarded as operating on separate planes without gradations, changeable from one form to another, and always related by mutual dependence. As the physical underlies and conditions chemical phenomena; the chemical, life phenomena; and the vital forces, psychical phenomena; and as the accomplished chemist must understand physics, the physiologist chemistry, and the psychologist physiology, so also psychical forces underlie and condition the phenomena of free spirit, and therefore the philosopher must understand psychology.
In another paper, on Plato's Doctrine of the Soul, and Argument for Immortality, in Comparison with the Doctrine and Argument derived from the Study of Nature, Prof. Le Conte presents the evolution doctrine of spirit—that the only significance of the whole history of the evolution of the cosmos through infinite time is, that it is a gestative process for the birth of spirit; and, with this, a corresponding theory of knowledge and method of extending its domain, and a philosophy of right conduct of life, or a theory of spirit culture—a philosophy equally removed from the ascetic on the one hand and from the hedonistic on the other.
The third part of Volume IX of the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia contains a Memoir on the Genus Palœosyops Leidy and its Allies, by Charles Earle, and a paper on the Fossil Avifauna of the Equus Beds of the Oregon Desert, by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt. Palæosyops is a fossil of the Bridger Eocene, of an animal that was more like the tapir than any other living animal, of which a considerable collection of material exists in the Museum of the Philadelphia Academy and a larger collection at Princeton, the two collections being ample enough to permit a satisfactory conjectural restoration. Dr. Shufeldt's studies of fossil birds are based upon the collections of Prof. Thomas Caydon, of Eugene City, Ore., and Prof. Cope, of specimens from Fossil and Silver Lakes. In the view of the author, they establish the fact that the birds of the later Tertiary time were sim-
