Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/429

Rh of that race-tendency which seeks in nature for the proof of the existence of God. In Nature, paganism found at first many gods; and our present monotheistic idea (outside of Christianity) seems to be the result of the gradual extinction of the belief in diverse deities, by the process of discovering a single force moving the universe of matter."

greater part of this work consists of articles written by the late Professor Maxwell some years before his death, with a view to their ultimate publication as an elementary text-book of the subject. Owing to the labor involved in the editing of the Cavendish papers, they were left in a very incomplete state at the time of his death, but the editor has endeavored to carry out the original purpose, by supplementing them with material taken from Professor Maxwell's larger work, "Electricity and Magnetism." The first two chapters are devoted to an experimental demonstration of the principal facts relating to electric charge considered as a quantity capable of inurement, and the third to electric work and energy. In the fourth chapter the electric field is considered, and Faraday's law of lines of induction forms the subject of the fifth. Some particular cases of electrification are taken up in the sixth chapter, electrical images in the seventh, and condensers the eighth. The various phenomena of the current form the subject of the ninth and tenth chapters, while the methods of maintaining it are considered in the eleventh. The twelfth chapter is devoted to the measurement of electrical resistance, and the thirteenth and last to electrical resistance of substances.

The author has endeavored to supply a want which he believes to be daily growing, as the monthly nurses of the last generation, whose knowledge gained by experience gave them a place hardly secondary to that of the doctor, are passing away—the want of a better understanding of the requirements of a new-born babe. A necessity for artificial feeding has been developed; over-luxurious and overheated dwellings have raised the question of proper clothing; and the rapid advancement of science has taught us the value of early treatment to eradicate the tendency to inherited taint. For explaining these matters, the work considers the requirements of the infant, first from birth till the cutting of its first teeth, then during the period of dentition, and finally those of a child after its third year.

" opium-smoking." says the author of this work, "is a vice that imperatively demands careful study at the hands of Americans is made manifest by the fact that the practice, comparatively unknown among us six years ago, is now indulged in by some six thousand of our countrymen, male and female, whose ranks are being daily recruited; . . . that large and small towns in the West and large cities in the East abound in places where this drug is sold and smoked"; and that in some of the States it has been found necessary to enact repressive laws on the subject. Dr. Kane has made careful investigations of the methods and effects of opium-smoking, by personal experiment, by the observation of smokers in the act and afterward, by correspondence and communication with other similar observers, and by the consultation of books in which the subject is discussed, and communicates the results in this volume.

author suggests that sugar, being the largest single article of import into the country, offers a greater field for usefulness in the investigation and introduction and development of a new industry than "any