Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/701

Rh to believe the testimony of many not unintelligent observers, a very evident tendency to "Americanization" is everywhere visible in European life, and naturally this tendency would be apparent first of all in political life. Even in the quiet of the German universities "Americanization" is an ever-present specter. Yet in these two volumes little or no reference is made to the United States. True, the author says of the American Revolution that "it was a prelude to revolution in Europe"; that it "stimulated the popular movement in England and in France." But that is all. With Sir Erskine May the post-Revolutionary history of the United States goes for nothing, apparently, in so far as European democracy is concerned. Surely this is a fatal oversight in our author, and one that can not be repaired without rewriting the entire work.

have before us Parts VI. to XII. inclusive, completing the first of the two volumes of this valuable work; and, though we have noticed it before, we take occasion on the completion of Vol. I. to again commend it to the favorable attention of our readers. The text is a familiar account of the different flowers and ferns. Their associations with human history, wherever such associations have existed, are pleasantly recounted; the medicinal and household uses of each species receive attention; the botanical characters are clearly stated; in short, the purely literary portion of the work is of the highest excellence. As for the plates, it can be said of them without exaggeration that they leave nothing to be desired, whether with respect to their artistic beauty or their fidelity to nature.

first of the three parts into which this work is divided contains a sketch of Byzantine history from the beginning of Justinian's reign down to the fall of Constantinople. The second gives an account of the modern Greeks and Albanians, their national characters, the state of religion and education among them, and their present condition and prospects. The third part is devoted to the Turkish Slavonians, the Wallachians, and the Gypsies, with sketches of the history of Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro.

the most important papers contained in this report is one on "Color-Blindness in its Relation to Accidents by Rail and Sea," by Professor Holmgren, of the Upsal University. The author gives the history of color-blindness, and points out practical methods for discovering and determining defects of the sense of color. To this treatise is appended an article on "Color-Blindness" contributed to the "Princeton Review" more than thirty years ago by Professor Joseph Henry. There is a number of papers, by different authors, on American antiquities. Other essays in the report which are specially worthy of notice are: "Notes on the History and Climate of New Mexico," "Change of the Mexican Axolotl to an Amblystoma" (translated from the German), "Diminution of the Aqueous Vapor of the Atmosphere with Increase of Altitude" (translated from the French), together with several other short memoirs on meteorological subjects.

contents of No. 3 include notes on the birds of Dakota and Montana, by Dr. Elliott Coues; on fishes from the Rio Grande, by Dr. D. S. Jordan; on the North American Pyralidæ, by Professor A. R. Grote; paleontological papers, by Dr. C. A. White; notes on fossils found in a dark shale discovered at Independence, Iowa, by Professor S. Calvin; and a paper on the mineralogy of Nevada, by Dr. W. J. Hoffman. No. 4 comprises a memoir by S. H. Scudder on certain fossil insects; a report by Dr. E. Coues on the fishes of Dakota and Montana; a catalogue of plants of the same region, by