productive labor, and other economic concepts, giving also the opinions held by the Roman and Greek jurists as to what things are wealth. He then discusses the views of Adam Smith, pointing out what he regards as Smith's chief merits and chief defects. In a similar manner the economic doctrines held by Ricardo, Whately, Say, Mill, Bastiat, Perry, and Jevons are critically examined. He also describes his own contributions to the science. In pursuance of his conviction that a great part of the confusion and false teaching in economics is due to lack of clear definitions, he devotes the remaining three fourths of the volume to setting forth the legal and scientific bases of the chief concepts of the science. Among these concepts are acceptilation, accommodation paper, banking, capital, currency, cost of production, credit, debt, exchange, Gresham's law, money, negative quantities in economics, rent, value, and wealth. Each is discussed with considerable fullness, particular attention being given to the early history of the ideas. Macleod is a vigorous and positive writer, and a study of his pages can not fail to substitute exactness for many hazy economic teachings.
With modesty and excellent taste Mrs. Rogers has presented to the public, not a fulsome eulogy, but a view of her husband's life as shown in his letters, supplemented only by the necessary biographical facts and a paragraph here and there to explain and connect the matter from his own pen.[1] Many of the biographical facts she allows the late Dr. Ruschenberger to tell in extracts from his Memorial of the Brothers Rogers. The son of a physician and professor of science, to whose chair in William and Mary College he succeeded at the age of twenty-four, William B. Rogers was early introduced into the field of scientific education, in which he did masterly work up to the last hour of his life. There was not much money available for the support of science in the United States during the thirties, and the teaching and research of Prof. Rogers were carried on with very limited resources. His means, moreover, were frequently drawn upon for the benefit of his brothers, who were struggling in the same field with rather less material success than his. In 1835, at the age of thirty-one, Prof. Rogers was appointed State Geologist of Virginia, and in the same year was called to the chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Virginia, which he retained until 1853. The geological survey was allowed by the State Legislature to continue for seven years, and furnished the occasion for undertaking what was Prof. Rogers's most extensive contribution to natural science. The letters exchanged between William and his brothers reveal something of the turbulence of hot blooded students and the paralyzing influence of narrow-minded authority with which many science professors had to contend half a century ago. All the important discoveries and controversies that mark the history of geology in this century are discussed or at least remarked upon in these letters. In the diction of many of the epistles, and especially in that of extracts from several addresses that are inserted in the volumes, we find all the evidence that can be given without his living voice as to the powers of oratory with which Prof. Rogers has been credited. We are especially impressed with the testimony of these volumes to the ability of their subject as an educa-
- ↑ Life and letters of William Barton Rogers. Edited by his Wife with the assistance of William T. Sedgwick. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Two vols., 12mo. Price, $4.
