Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/519

Rh recently yielded the most striking and important contributions to the subject, both in dynamical and structural geology, and in the department of ancient life. Prof. Le Conte's residence in California, for the last few years, has been favorable to the cultivation of this field, of which he has fully availed himself by excursions of observations, and vacation-rambles with parties of students and graduates, through regions especially rich in geological interest. His book contains the results of these personal inquiries, and those of other observers, including the revelations of remarkable fossils by Prof. Marsh and the naturalists who have devoted themselves to paleontological exploration.

The volume is written with great clearness and with admirable judgment in respect to the proportions of space allotted to its multifarious topics. A prime object with the author has been to interest his readers, and for this purpose he has given prominence to principles and subordinated details, so that his work will prove attractive to the general reader as well as to the class-room student. It is profusely and elegantly illustrated, in a style of which the reader will be enabled to judge by referring to the article on "Geysers," in the present number of the which is borrowed from the volume. This treatise is by an eminent working geologist, one who knows the subject thoroughly in its latest aspects, and we can commend it without qualification to all who desire an intelligent acquaintance with the science, as fresh, lucid, full, authentic, the result of enthusiastic study and of long experience in the art of teaching mature classes.

this book education is considered from a broad, humanitarian point of view, and in connection with the great causes of decay and deterioration that are operating in society. The wealth of facts and materials of all kinds that the author has brought together seems to have proved somewhat embarrassing to him, as he has hardly succeeded in bringing them into close logical method. But he has collected a great deal of interesting material, interspersed with valuable observations and reflections, and the volume is pervaded by a reformatory and progressive spirit. Mr. Royce's chapter on "Classical and Scientific Education" contains much good sense, and his opinions are very decided, as the following passage illustrates: "Emerson says that he has not met in all his travels in America with half a dozen men who could read Plato profitably. This whole Greek and Latin scholarship is an imposture, the writing of miserable verses in these languages included. There is not one teacher in ten who has sufficient knowledge of these languages to derive from them a higher culture. The learned apparatus requisite for their thorough understanding requires the study of a lifetime. Must hundreds of thousands of students in the land throw away their years and opportunities for the sake of a few hundred Latin and Greek roots, which can be learned by any English student with the help of an etymological hand-book in a few weeks, if not days?"

"Notes," published by order of the Secretary of War for the use of the Ordnance Department of the U. S. Army, contain a large amount of useful and practical information concerning hides and the manufacture of leather. Sundry fraudulent practices used in tanning are pointed out, and their effects on the leather described. The author does not undertake to give judgment on the comparative merits of oak-tanned and hemlock-tanned leather; it would require an exhaustive series of experiments to decide this question ultimately.

the papers published in this volume are several natural history catalogues relating to the botany and entomology of Kansas, a meteorological summary for 1876, essays on evidences of ancient forests in Kansas, on river-bluffs, the habits of prairie dogs, the influence of food-selection upon animal life, etc.