the cells are the units in which life exists and acts is emphasized. The author has endeavored to include all the useful points of the older text-books, and to add such new matter as the recent progress of physiological and hygienic science demands. Avoiding technical terms, he has sought to express the truths in simple language, "such as he would use in instructing a mother as to the nature of the sickness of her child." The subjects of alcohol and other narcotics are made prominent in all the books, and are discussed fully in the third of the series. The relation of respiration and oxidation to the disappearance of food, to the production of waste matters, and to the development of heat and force, is dwelt upon. Simple and easy demonstrations, many of them new, are provided at the ends of chapters. A chapter on Repairs of Injuries, or the restoration of the natural functions, when impaired, by the body, is new in a school textbook.
In Yetta Ségal[1] a slender thread of a story is used by Mr. Rollin as the vehicle for a theory of "type fusion" or convergence which he thinks has not received sufficient attention from social or scientific students. There are a pair of lovers, one of whom is discovered at a critical period in the courtship to have negro blood in his veins, and a philosopher who comes forward to satisfy the parties (who hardly need it) that this is no serious matter, but is all according to human evolution and the destiny of the race. "You must be impressed," he says, "by the fact that there are a great many people here and there, of mixed blood, and that the number is increasing. . . . it is well that not a few are indeed truly admirable specimens of the human race. Such phenomena must be interpreted in a way consistent with man's nature: if he is developmental; if he shall attain a higher status through struggle, or through means that are seemingly, or for the time, degrading; if he is moving from the simple to the complex, as to organization; if universal movement tends to unific existence—then race interchange, with elimination of peculiar characteristics, has probably made its appearance as a phase of infinite order, and for the benefit of future man. . . . It is presumptuous for the wisest to assert that the man of lower type has no element of strength peculiar to his race which the most advanced does not need in his present organization. It may be needed either for present protection in the way of re-enforcement, or as an element of strength for further advancement." Mr. Rollin does not advocate type fusion or wish to accelerate the movement, but presents it as a fact and factor in human evolution deserving more extensive and thorough study than it has received.
The increasing attention which of late years has been given to the study of comparative anatomy has finally resulted in what promises to be a complete and detailed account of the structure of a subhuman mammal[2] The author, Dr. Jayne, believes that a course in mammalian anatomy offers a valuable preliminary to the study of medicine, and this is the purpose for which the book has been made. This is to a certain extent true, especially where, as in the case of the cat, there is so close a similarity to the structure of the human body. But the chief scientific interest and value of such a work must lie in its broader philosophic aspects; in the aid which it can not but give in clearing up some of the many mooted points of evolutional biology, and in the stimulus which it will impart to the study of relationships among the lower animals. The present volume, the first of the series, deals only with the skeleton of the cat, each bone being first studied individually, then in its relations to other bones and to the muscular system and the skeleton as a whole, and finally in comparison with the corresponding portion of the human skeleton. There are 611 extremely good illustrations, and the printing of the volume is unusually clean and attractive.
Among the articles of special value in recent numbers of the (bimonthly) Bulletin of the Department of Labor, under the editorial control of Commissioner Carroll B. Wright and Chief Clerk O. D. Weaver, are
