Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/721

Rh that is, stars can be seen at Cordoba, which have less than tour tenths of the light of the faintest of Argelander's stars. There are 10,649 stars visible to the naked eye at Cordoba, and of these 8,198 are given in the catalogue and in the maps of Dr. Gould.

The work before us consists, first, of a full description of the methods of observation and the stellar phenomena of the southern heavens, and this is followed by a tabulated catalogue of the stars. It is accompanied by a large atlas of fourteen charts, which "gives an exact pictorial representation of the state of the sky at the epoch of the work. Besides giving a representation of the isolated stars, the shadings and gradations of the milky way are given with the greatest detail from repeated observations and revisions."

These stellar maps, though South American work, are executed with great beauty and perfection. The obstacles in the way of their production were very formidable, and the genius of Dr. Gould is perhaps as much seen in the skill and perseverance with which he overcame them as in the scientific faithfulness of the labor and the artistic finish of the machanicalmechanical [sic] results. The whole of the printing was executed at a distance of 500 miles from Cordova, and the proofs, frequently requiring three and four corrections, had to be passed backward and forward with long delay, so that the project, which should have been completed in 1877, actually required two years longer. The quarto volume containing the catalogue is in the Spanish and English languages, side by side in double columns.

The production of such a work, of course, involved very heavy expenses, which were liberally met by the Argentine Government. A few copies have been left on sale with D. Appleton & Co., at a comparatively nominal price, for the use of such observatories, libraries, and astronomers as may desire to procure them.

is a work written by a lawyer, and, it may be assumed, written mainly for lawyers, although it claims to have an interest for a wider circle of readers. There are two great categories of law: those regularities of process in things around, which we call laws of nature and which execute themselves; and those rules of conduct laid down by civil authorities as laws of society, and which are executed by the machinery of government. The term law, as thrice used in the title-page of this book, belongs to the latter category—that is, to statutory regulations. Now, it has ever been a problem of great interest to find out the relations which these two systems of law sustain to each other, and this seems to be the fundamental question to which Judge Willard has addressed himself in the preparation of this volume. Although, as a discussion of the principles of personal rights, and the general policy of law in connection therewith, the treatise has practical claims upon the legal profession; yet its broader interest is to be found in the author's attempt to affiliate the system of law upon the natural conditions of society. The idea of the law which the work endeavors to bring into view and illustrate, by an examination of the present body of law, is that legal ordinances are but a formulation of those habits of a community that are essential to the continuance of social life. Judge Willard repudiates the idea, which he holds to be widely entertained, that law is nothing more than a set of merely arbitrary rules. "In every community of men," he says, "the habits of its individuals constitute a general law. These habits have been mainly derived by heredity, modified by various means. Certain tendencies have taken forms more or less developed in their habits, and still continue to operate as modifying causes in the further development of habit. So far as these habits are essential to maintain the social state, and attain its ends, they are imperative, or assume the form of law—that is, are embodied in the common will. Beyond this there must be an authority to select the means of maintaining the society, and the ends it shall pursue, and to prescribe the conduct of individuals in reference to the community and to each other. This is the public law of society. Though recognizing that law is a growth, the author is not here concerned with tracing out its