Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/877

Rh purpose of introducing better methods of instruction into the public schools. Besides the annals of the meetings and work of the Society, the memorial contains notices of the lives and labors of its members, officers, and benefactors, who have died during its existence, accompanied with nine portraits. In the "special scientific papers" are included articles on "The Classification of Lavas," by N. S. Shaler; the "Species of Planorbis at Steinheim," by Alpheus Hyatt; "The Devonian Insects of New Brunswick," by S. H. Scudder; "The Cedar-Apples of the United States," by W. G. Farlow; "A Structural Feature in Deep-Sea Ophiurians," by Theodore Lyman; "The Development of the Squid," by W. K. Brooks; "Limulus Polyphemus," by A. S. Packard, Jr.; "The Milkweed Butterfly," by Edward Burgess; "The Development of Double headed Vertebrates," by Samuel F. Clarke; "The Tongues of Reptiles and Birds," by C. S. Minot; "A Special Anatomical Study in Birds," by E. S. Morse; "The Crania of New England Indians," by Lucien Carr; and "The Feeling of Effort," by William James.

is a book for the medical profession, and a very valuable one, as it is based upon the latest scientific knowledge brought to the test of practice. Physiology and animal chemistry have made sure and very important advances in late years, so that the fundamental changes of digestion, nutrition, and excretion are far more clearly understood than formerly. Physiology, treating of the normal operations of the living system, is the basis of all knowledge of perverted or diseased action, and this book is written from a strictly physiological standpoint. It opens with an excellent history of the processes of natural digestion in their several stages, including, of course, the constitution of foods, and their transformations under the influence of the digestive secretions. From this point the author passes on in successive chapters to the consideration of Primary Indigestion, Artificial Digestion, Ferments, Tissue Nutrition, Secondary Indigestion, Diet and Drink, the Functions of the Liver, Liver Disturbance, Biliousness, and the medicinal and Dietetic Treatment of Liver Derangements. The subject will be pursued in another volume devoted to the consideration of Gout.

The author holds that disturbances of digestion are terribly on the increase in the present day, and he adds a valuable appendix on "the failure of the digestive organs at the present time," and on the "failure of nutrition in children."

We have said that this volume has been made for physicians, but it would be a mistake to infer that it had been exclusively prepared for them, and will not be of great value to non-professional readers. The information it contains ought to be widely diffused, and persons of ordinary intelligence can learn a great deal from it that will be of the highest practical use. It can not, of course, be mastered without study, but no subject will better repay careful attention. The general ignorance in relation to foods, their composition, preparation, and physiological effects, and the causes of indigestion in its various forms, is something lamentable, and the daily practice that results from this ignorance is almost heathenish. There are, moreover, abundance of quackish books on these subjects which so mislead people that they are worse than nothing. It is, therefore, important that the circulation of really valuable volumes on such topics as the one before us should be in every way promoted.

are not many novels that survive their generation; they generally fall into an early and deserved oblivion. Mr. Lewes was not eminent as a novelist, his efforts in this direction being, indeed, regarded rather as failures than successes; but, after the lapse of a generation, his first essay of this kind reappears in a new and American edition. Mr. Lewes began with novel writing, went on into dramatic composition, passed from this to philosophy, and finally emerged in the field of science. His novels,