Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/388

374 gooseberry, strawberry, and pine worms; the army-worm, Colorado potato-beetle, Rocky Mountain locust, etc.; together with the insects which, acting as parasites, help to diminish the number of these pests.

The illustrations are numerous, drawn mostly by the author from Nature; the suggestions are practical, and make the reports valuable to the agriculturist as well as to the scientific entomologist. The locust, or so-called grasshopper, naturally receives the fullest attention, and certainly the facilities for observation have been ample enough for the accumulation of information that will be of use, should the West be again visited by that scourge.

as might be expected from the long experience of the author, is a valuable addition to savings-banks literature.

In the history of the rise and progress—we had almost said decline—of the system; the criticism of past and present management; and the suggestions as to the proper way to run such institutions, a thorough familiarity with the subject is shown. The remarks on the nature of investments are to be commended to presidents and trustees, and the plan for winding up insolvent institutions would, if adopted, do much to mitigate the loss and suffering which the present mode of procedure involves.

Some space is given to the details of a plan for school penny savings-banks, which is simple and perfectly practicable, having been found to work well both in England and on the Continent, cultivating habits of thrift in the young, and exercising an excellent influence in the communities where they have been started.

task which Mr. McCoan has undertaken is, to describe and explain the economic conditions of the New Egypt, as will appear from the titles of the chapters, which include those on the territory, population, administration, finance, commerce, agriculture, public instruction, public works, manufactures, etc., with a series of appendices giving statistical information about the government, finances, trade, cost of living, etc.

The author says that he found this corner of the field of book-making on Egypt almost untouched. No material lay ready to his hand, but his facilities for getting it were good, and he has made excellent use of them. The Government of Egypt is the khedive. Legislative bodies, ministers, and cabinets, are mere agents of his personal will, and the recent progress is due mainly to his wisdom and energy. His highness is now forty-six years old, below the middle height, stout, though not unwieldy, and with nothing of an Eastern but the native dignity and easy polish of his manners. He devotes fourteen hours a day for at least three hundred days in the year to the work of administration, is familiar with all the details of national affairs, and in the extent and variety of his information is as encyclopedic as Dom Pedro himself.

The book corrects some common misapprehensions. Taxation of the peasantry, for example, though heavy, is not so oppressive nor enforced so brutally as we have been given to understand; and the system of slavery, though in itself indefensible, is not at all such as formerly obtained in the United States, and still exists in Cuba and Brazil. In both these respects the condition of Egypt is vastly better than that of the nominally ruling country, Turkey. An excellent map and a copious index add to the value of the book.

pamphlets are all reprints of papers read before medical societies, and have a common object, which is to show the importance of heredity in fixing the organic characteristics of the individual, and so determining the part which he shall play in society—characteristics which are, of course, modified to a greater or less extent by the environment. They are chiefly