Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/433

Rh it represents. We learn from it that the Maimonides Library contains 26,840 volumes, the annual circulation of which is 47,570 among 4,708 readers. Of the additions of the past year only twenty-eight per cent were fiction. The librarian, Mr. Max Cohen, is collecting for it a body of works on political and social science; and efforts are making to secure an educational collection, for which books on the methods of instruction and administration of schools in this country and Europe have been acquired.

is the first volume of the "International Education Series," to be published by D. Appleton & Co., of which Dr. W. T. Harris is the editor. The original translation, which was made for the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," was intended for the use of philosophical students, who in general admire precise technical terms. In preparing the present edition, the translation has been revised with a view better to adapt it to the needs of translators not skilled in philosophy. Where it has been thought necessary, phrases, or even entire sentences, have been used to convey the sense of a single word of the original; so that the editor is able to claim that no obscurity remains except such as is due to the philosophic depth and generality of the treatment, and that the translation is now more intelligible than the original. The peculiar merit of Rosenkranz's work is found in the fact that in it everything is brought to the test of the highest principle of philosophy; that one which is the acknowledged principle of Christian civilization, and which, as such, the author makes the foundation of his theory of education, while he demonstrates its validity by an appeal to psychology on the one hand, and to the history of civilization on the other; the principle of promoting the elevation of the human race. Among the points of great value, the author directs attention to the principle of self-estrangement as lying at the foundation of the philosophy of education, and as furnishing a key to many problems discussed by the educational reformers from Comenius to Herbert Spencer. The distinction of corrective and retributive punishment, the part of the work devoted to educational psychology, the methods of treating the three grades of capacity—the blockhead, the mediocre talent, and the genius—the care with which the subject of morality is treated, and the clearness with which the importance and functions of religious education are set forth, are particularly commended. An entire division of the book is taken up with a history of education, based on the philosophy of history. It is rather an outline of the history of human culture than a special history of schools or of pedagogics, and is recommended as highly valuable for teachers and parents, and for all who desire to see in a condensed form the essential outcome of human history.

amount of literature which is devoted exclusively to the subject of topographical drawing and sketching, as distinguished from the actual field-practice, is very scarce. When the surveyor has completed the collecting of all the data which are necessary for the obtaining of an exact reproduction on paper of the area which has been surveyed, the question arises, Which are the best methods by which these data can be graphically reproduced in a map, so as to give the reader the best possible idea about the exact formation of the ground surveyed, whether it be a farm, a county, or a State? The progress made in topographical drawing has been very great, and although, of course, many conventional signs and colors have to be used, these are such that even unpracticed eyes may be able to read a map and to understand it in its minutest particulars.

Lieutenant Reed is Assistant Professor of Drawing at the West Point Military Academy. In his preface he states: "The writing of this book was first suggested by