Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/579

Rh at on the subject, it would be a great step in advance toward the attainment of some positive conclusion in regard to the artificial feeding of infants. After a long and careful study of the matter, he is convinced that human milk contains much less casein than is commonly attributed to it; and he here puts forth his reasons, and a detail of the methods by which his conclusions have been attained.

book is designed especially as a text-book for medical students during their attendance upon lectures, and as a book of ready reference for physicians. The author, who finds the ordinary chemical textbooks too voluminous and largely occupied with matter irrelevant to the wants of the medical student, has prepared in this one such a one as his experience of twelve years in the Long Island College Hospital, in which he is a professor, has taught him that his students need. In the first of the four parts into which the work is divided, are presented fundamental facts in chemical physics; in the second part, the elementary theories of chemistry; in the third part, the natural history of the elements and principal compounds, with their physiological and toxicological bearings; in the fourth part, those organic compounds only which the physician will be likely to meet. Tables and analyses are added for those who make the work a reference-book. The chemistry of the tissues and secretions is omitted, because it is considered to belong rather to physiological chemistry.

"Saxe Holme Stories" attracted much interest when they were first published in "Scribner's Monthly," on account of their intrinsic merit, which was regarded as of the best, and of the mystery which was attached to their authorship. This was never revealed till a long time afterward.

This interest has been renewed by the recent death of Mrs. "H. H." Jackson, and the avowal in connection with it that she was the author of the stories. They hold the first place among works of the class to which they belong. "A Wheel of Fire" is a tragic story of a young woman whose life was tormented by the apprehension of hereditary insanity, and all of whose plans and movements were controlled or modified by it,

of sketches of the ways of certain birds which the author met in the fields or had as pets in her house, and of their moods and methods of expressing them. With the exception of a few incidents which are properly credited, everything recorded in the volume came, she says, under her own observation, and is literally and entirely true so far as the fact is concerned, although she may have sometimes misconstrued the motives of the little actors in the drama.

author has been moved to present a popular treatise on this subject by his conviction of the importance of the heart in the economy of the human organism, and by a belief that the public should know more about its functions, and the means of preventing or at least modifying the dangers to which it is exposed. His exposition is clear, practical, and unsensational.

Report of the Committee on Disinfectants of the American Public Health Association. Baltimore. 1885. Pp. 187.

Fifth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist of California for the Year ending May 15, 1885. By Henry G. Hanks. Sacramento. 1885. Pp. 285.

Memorials of Henry Brace Norton. Pp. 110.

Revision of the Palæocrinoidea. By Charles Wachsmuth and Frank Springer. First Section. Philadelphia. 1885. Pp. 188 with Plates.

Hand-Book to the National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. New York: Brentano Brothers. 1886. Pp. 110. Illustrated.

Photography of the Infra-red Region of the Solar Spectrum. 4 pages; and Methods of determining the Speeds of Photographic Exposures, etc., etc.,