Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/285

Rh and the sixth book comprises accounts of the applications that have been made of the electric light in light-houses, war, navigation, in industry, the arts, and commerce, its installation in mines and excavations, railroad-stations, warehouses, and even in agricultural operations. All of these accounts are profusely illustrated with clear representations of the machinery and apparatus described, with a few landscapes electrically lighted. The authors have also given much information concerning the cost of establishing and maintaining the electric light for these several purposes. The work is thus not only one to be read, but also one that may be profitably consulted for practical purposes.

pamphlet embodies the results of an inquiry which the author has made into the relations of the two moneys to each other, and into the utility of gold, silver, and paper as materials for money. He concludes that gold is the sole money of commerce, and will continue to be so as long as present commercial customs continue, but that the demand within the several States for paper or silver tokens for use in internal business is sufficient to absorb all the silver, and raise it to its coin value in gold, and keep it there. Silver, if its use for such a purpose should become general in the states of Europe and America, might thus eventually gain a recognized place as money in commerce, but not otherwise; while, under existing circumstances, "silver or any other metal could not be coined at its commercial value in gold without subjecting the coinage to frequent changes."

noticed several months ago some volumes of a series of small hand-books published under the supervision of the Boston Society of Natural History, which were designed as aids to teachers wishing to instruct their pupils in branches of that department, but not to be used as text-books. We notice in addition to the works we then named the two whose titles stand at the head of this article. The manual on mollusks is fully illustrated with excellent plates, and Mr. Hyatt is strong in insisting that teachers can not use any text-book as a basis of good instruction, but must lead children to see for themselves. The system of classification set forth in Mr. Crosby's book on minerals is practically illustrated and exemplified in the arrangement of collections in the museum of the society.

Sewall regards ethics as appertaining to the will rather than to the intellect; and suggests that it may be considered as a kind of moral æsthetics, or "æsthetics on the moral plane," and defined as a science of taste that treats of the will of man as subject to sensations of pleasure and of pain from moral objects presented to it, and capable of being affected and modified by them. The object of moral education is to adapt man to the moral law of the universe, which, assuming that it is real, may be expressed as the law of use, or of service, "but the law of mutual service, not the service of self." The author has no confidence in intellectual culture as an element of moral progress.

papers of most general interest in the former of these two volumes are the notice of the death of Dr. Thomas M. Brewer, by President Bouvé; and the review of Professor Brewer's scientific labors, by Mr. J. A. Allen. The other volume contains notices of Mr. Bouvé's withdrawal from the presidency of the society, and of the deaths of Dr. C. T. Jackson, Count Pourtales, Mr. L. S. Burbank, and Mr. George D. Smith. Many of the special papers, which concern