Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/437

Rh Mechanism" (including the crank and connecting-rod, cams, the heart-wheel, escapements, ratchet-wheels, wheels in trains, the winch or crab, pulley-blocks, the steelyard, lifting-jack, etc.); "Truth of Surface, Strength of Materials, the Lathe"; and "Elementary Mechanics of Liquids and Gases."

author—a well-known minister—whose training and mode of thought have been largely theological, professes that in his examination of the theory of evolution, of which this essay is a part of the fruit, he has endeavored to avoid all dogmatism and special pleading. "His aim has been to ascertain for himself just what is the posture of the hypothesis at this time, without much regard as to how it stood in the past, or any regard to its possible future, or any care for the effect which the result of his honest study might have on any scientific, philosophical, or theological opinion previously held by him." He assumes that there is no religious reason for the acceptance or rejection of evolution, and there are no valid sentimental objections to it; but the result of his investigation is the Scotch verdict, "not proven."

volume consists of essays and lectures, written by the author at various times during the last twenty years, and which deal solely with books, art, and history, as distinguished from politics, philosophy, or religion; and which do not touch on any controversy except "the perennial problems presented to us by literature and the study of the past." About one third of the matter is in print for the first time. We have been interested in the essay which gives the name to the volume, and find it pregnant with valuable lessons. The burden of it is, that in the present multiplication of books it is impossible to master a fraction of those which may be helpful to us; then why should we waste our time over reading of any other kind? A short review of all literature, ancient and modern, follows, with hints as to the lots from which we can make the most judicious selections. Among the other "pieces" are a dialogue on "Culture"; "The Life of George Eliot"; "Historic London"; "The Æsthete"; "Bernard of Clairvaux"; "A Few Words" about the eighteenth and about the nineteenth centuries; and two articles—on Froude's "Life of Carlyle," and "Histories of the French Revolution"—which first appeared in the "North American Review."

author of this essay is Professor of Oratory and Æsthetics in the College of New Jersey. The work, while it is complete in itself, in the sense that it develops from beginning to end the whole subject of which it treats, is in other senses only one of a series of essays which Mr. Raymond has written, respecting the various arts in their functions of representation, of which he gives a tolerably full list. He sustains the conclusion that while poetry is not, in a technical sense, a useful art, its forms have their uses, and many uses and practical ones, at the basis of which lies "the interpretation of the meaning of nature, natural and human, by those who have learned to interpret it, while striving to have it convey their own meanings." His points and principles, as he deduces them in detail, are copiously illustrated with citations from the poets.

elaborate report has been compiled under an arrangement between the United States Fish Commission and the Census Bureau, to prepare as exhaustive an investigation of the objects of the work as possible. The scheme of the investigation as drawn up by Mr. Goode embraced the natural history of marine products; the fishing grounds; the fishermen and fishing towns; apparatus and modes of capture;