Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/141

Rh moisture, and chimneys. Chapters are devoted to the ventilation of halls of audience, theatres, schools, and hospitals, and to ventilation by aspiration. The volume is illustrated by seventy-two plates and diagrams.

interesting book is directed to the problem of the relations of religion and science, and presents a new view from an advanced stand-point, which many regard as helpful and healthful in its influence. It is not to be denied that the author's purpose is an exalted one, nor that he deals with his subject in an independent and original way, and with skill and power. His object is the essential harmony of science and religion, and his method is to show that the system of law which is established in the natural world holds equally true in the spiritual world. The work is eminently liberal, not so much from any peculiarity of the author's religious opinions, as from his fundamental position that the natural world is to be studied first, and its laws worked out as scientific verities, and that this scheme of order is to be rediscovered in the spiritual world as a part of the universal system. The position taken is not that of Horace Bushnell, who describes the spiritual world as "another system of nature incommunicably separate from ours"; and further says, "God has, in fact, erected another and higher system, that of spiritual being and government, for which Nature exists, a system not under the law of cause and effect, but ruled and marshaled under other kinds of laws." After referring to the argument as presented with acknowledged ability by Mr. Murphy in "The Scientific Basis of Faith," and to the reasoning of Butler's "Analogy," Mr. Drummond remarks: "After all, then, the spiritual world as it appears at this moment is outside of natural law. Theology continues to be considered, as it has always been, a thing apart. It remains still a stupendous and splendid construction, but on lines altogether its own." It is therefore the ambition of the author to show that the natural and spiritual worlds are constructed upon the same system, so that to the degree in which we understand the method of Nature shall we be prepared to understand the method of the spiritual world. By the implications of the argument, our first concern is with science, which elucidates natural truth; and as this is a gradual process, one science after another having slowly appeared in a necessary order of succession and preparation, the higher following the lower, so theology, the master-science, and to which all others are finally tributary, is to be developed by extending and establishing the natural laws in the spiritual sphere. It is a great thesis that Mr. Drummond has undertaken to illustrate and sustain, but he brings to the task a very able command of the results of modern science, an earnest and catholic spirit, and a reverent regard for the interests of truth, whatever forms they take. As a book of reconciliations, the volume is one of the best of its class.

series of Dr. Brown's books on forestry has already become quite a library (we find twelve volumes catalogued in the list prefixed to the present number), and bids fair to present all that is most important in the literature of the subject and in the experience bearing upon it. The present volume relates to a country in which the conditions are most favorable to forest-culture, and to the restoration of the woods as they are cut down. Yet the reports show that abundance has led to waste, and that, notwithstanding the great recuperative power of the Norwegian forests, they are becoming impoverished under the excessive drain that is made upon them. The greater part of the book is occupied with descriptions of the general and special features, geographical, topographical, and climatological, of Norway, and their influence upon the distribution and growth of the forests. The last chapter, on "Remedial Measures," gives account of the experimental plantations at Aas, the purchase by the Government of estates on forest-lands, and the allotment, in their several districts, of the forest officers of the government staff.