Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/726

708 plants described are given under their common names.

It would seem that all intelligent people should desire to be informed concerning the history of such familiar things as the plants that are used for daily food; but the intellectual interest of the subject is heightened when we find that this common subject is involved largely in the progress of human civilization.

in this book presents a new theory respecting the connection of the two worlds in which he believes man has his existence, and their intimate relations to each other, based on the psychical and so-called spiritual phenomena which have recently attracted attention. lie supposes that man while an inhabitant of this world is composed of two factors, soul and body, each of which is complete in itself and separate from the other as regards constituent form, but corresponding with the other in all essential particulars, the body being permeated by the soul in every minutest part, and that the separation from each other is death, upon which the soul becomes wholly independent. He also proposes a theory of electricity, the essential feature of which is that that agent is closely related with the great law of spiritual existence.

noticed this important work upon its first appearance, and recognized its position as foremost among the standard treatises on botanical science of the present day. The work is intended to put the student in full possession of the present state of knowledge upon the subject, and, besides describing the phenomena of plant life which are already accurately known, it indicates also very fully those theories and problems in which botanical research is at present especially engaged. Detailed discussions of questions of minor importance have been avoided, and the historical development of botanical views has also been omitted, that the entire space of the work may be devoted to a representation of the existing condition of the science.

No change in the plan of the work has been made in this new edition, nor any modification of its leading features. Some minor alterations and additions have been introduced, and something has been done to improve and perfect the translation. A few notes are appended to the volume, embodying some of the very latest results in botanical research. The work is elegant in form and complete in its treatment, and may be commended as the most adequate treatise for the thoroughgoing botanical student, and at the same time one of the best books we have for general reference in a library.

this paper the editor of the Johns Hopkins University "Studies in Historical and Political Science" has consented to include a plot a little outside of the field which it was first intended to cultivate in those studies, and he has decided wisely. The paper describes the spontaneous organization of a community, and the growth of laws and established customs among a group of boys just brought together, almost from the wild state, at the school with which he was connected; and gives a study, from actual contemporary observation, of the manner in which, in all likelihood, the primitive societies grew up and became fixed. The school was the McDonough School, near Baltimore, to which is attached a domain of eight hundred acres, giving ample privileges for nutting and bird's-nesting and rabbit trapping. In the beginning everything was common. The first to grasp a prize secured it. All is very different now. Conflicts came, and made rules necessary to avoid them. The rules were made by the boys' own action, as occasion arose for forming them; and now the property and the privileges are all parceledparcelled [sic] out, with fixed regulations for their tenure, transference, and descent. Classes have grown up of landlords and tenants, and there are monopolists and persons