Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/869

Rh and a list of contributions to Volume III. The article in the midst of which the part opens, on "Sketches," is one of great interest, and is liberally illustrated with musical citations. "The Sonata" is fully considered. Forty-eight pages are given to the subject of "Song," which is treated historically and systematically with reference to the characteristic features of the songs of different nationalities. The work appears destined to be one that no musician will be willing to be without.

paper is the substance of a lecture delivered in Montreal, in which the evidence in favor of the doctrine of evolution is reviewed and stated in brief in a very clear and forcible manner. Concerning the orders of life, the author shows that animals and plants appear as they would have done if one race sprang from another; that each being does spring from (embryonic) forms common to the races below it; and that life has appeared on the earth in the order that it would have done if each higher race had been developed from a lower one. Brief consideration is also given to the evolution of mind and of the universe as postulated by the nebular hypothesis; and, finally, the author, admitting that evolution does not solve all the mystery of life, asserts that it does not either question the existence of God, but "only concerns itself as to the manner in which the Supreme Power works, and claims that it acts through natural law, and not through miracle.

little work is the textbook in several German and Russian universities, and more than one English translation has already appeared in this country. The present translation differs essentially from the previous ones in the amount of new matter added. The short introduction on chemical manipulations will prove valuable to the student who is working alone or in laboratories imperfectly supplied with instructors, and in any case saves a great deal of oral teaching and demonstration. Next follow the special examples of the original with several additional ones, but rearranged so as to place the reactions for bases and acids under separate headings, and eliminating those which require too long a time in preparation. A new chapter is then introduced to serve as a guide in the various practical examinations during the course. An excellent table of spectra accompanies the book, with a chapter on the use of the spectroscope. Directions are also given for the detection of a few organic substances such as alcohol, chloroform, glucose, phenol, and the alkaloids. The book closes with a chapter of thirty-eight pages on volumetric analysis, in which very full directions are given for preparing test solutions, with description of apparatus employed. The course embraced in Dr. Curtman's book is sufficient for physicians and others who do not intend to become chemists, while it is a useful introduction to a more thorough course for the latter.

name of Watts is already familiar to the chemists of all countries, not only as the author of the only complete dictionary of chemistry in the English language, but also as the editor of the leading English journals of that science, "The Chemical News" and the "Journal of the London Chemical Society." In 1868 Mr. Watts revised Fowne's well-known "Manual of Chemistry," and from time to time new editions of that work have appeared under his editorial care. The book continued to increase in size until it became necessary to divide it into two volumes, the one containing the inorganic and physical portion, the other being devoted to organic chemistry. The work before us is but a new edition of the first volume of Fownes's, having the same ancient woodcuts, and in most cases the same matter accompanies them. We notice, however, new cuts of a Holtz machine and a Ruhmkorff's coil, but none of any modern dynamo, although the obsolete cylinder machine is still paraded before the reader. In