refuted. On the other hand, whatever pertains to the real history of astronomy has been given with sufficient fullness to make it plain; the principles which are illustrated by enormous masses of observations that there is no room to record; short biographical sketches of leading astronomers other than living ones; a considerable number of dates, such as those of the births and deaths of astronomers; and even descriptions of such obsolete theories as appear to form an integral part of astronomical progress. Among the illustrations are portraits of a few of the eminent astronomers of the past.
The special articles in the Bulletin of the Department of Labor, Nos. 18 and 19, are Wages in the United States and Europe, 1870 to 1898, in the September number, and Mr. Dunham's paper on The Alaskan Gold Fields and the Opportunities they offer for Capital and Labor, and Mutual Relief and Benefit Associations in the Printing Trade, by W. S. Wandly, in the number for November.
The Rev. Dr. Adam Miller is a retired minister who has devoted his leisure hours to the study of sunshine, in which he has included all that properly belongs to the sun. He has read the standard works on astronomy, and some, but apparently not all, the later results for comparison, it seems, rather than information, and he has performed some original and ingenious experiments with the sunlight. His views, therefore, as expressed in The Sun an Electric Light (Chicago), are his own. He has come to the conclusion that the material theories of the origin of the sun's light and heat do not account for the facts, and are therefore insufficient if not wrong; postulates a theory that the phenomena are matters of electric action made perceptible to us by refraction through the atmosphere, and makes an unnecessary and inconsequent attack on the theory of the conservation of forces. When Dr. Miller assumes that his views of the insufficiency of present theories and of the electrical nature of the sun's action are new, he shows that he is not fully read up in the current literature on the subject. The insufficiency of present views is confessed, and the discussions of the subject with the various suppositions which he criticises are efforts to find better explanations. The causal identity of electricity, heat, and certain other forces is accepted. But, given that electrical action is the basis of it all, what then? Philosophers know of no way of maintaining electric action except through material processes, and the way they are replenished to keep it up is as hard to find out as would be the way fuel is supplied to keep up a solar fire.
A pamphlet entitled The Story of the Rise of the Oral Method in America (of Instructing the Deaf and Dumb) as told in the Writings of the late Hon. Gardner G. Hubbard, compiled by Mrs. M. Gardner Bell, reveals a seeming indolence in the early instructors of the old method that is hardly creditable to their energy in investigation. When deaf-mute instruction was first projected here, a teacher was sent over to Europe to learn the best methods. Denied access to schools in London and Edinburgh, where articulation systems were taught, he went to Paris, found the Abbé de l'Epée's sign language there and brought it over. This and the finger language held sway in our schools for many years, while the possibility of teaching articulation to the deaf was denied. It required long-persistent effort on the part of a few men who refused to have their deaf children taught these systems and consequently isolated from their fellowmen to secure a recognized place for oral schools. The story of the struggle is told in Mrs. Bell's pamphlet.
The widespread ignorance and superstition with which even to-day the practicing physician has to contend are hardly conceivable by an outsider. The conditions under which a doctor knows his patients are just those calculated to bring out the weak spots in their mental organization, and the absurd notions which still have a foothold in many minds are a constant source of wonder to the speculative doctor. These superstitions are so widespread and so frequently dangerous to the whole community, as well as the individual himself, that anything which is calculated to improve matters, however so little, should be welcomed with open arms. Dr. Theme, by H. Rider Haggard, is aimed at the antivaccinators, and by means of a not uninteresting story points out the serious consequences which a general be-
