Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/435

Rh of value to the teacher. The book is designed for schools and the junior students of colleges, and is intended to facilitate the employment of practical physics as a training for the mind.

Under the title The Child and Nature, a book has been issued by ''Alex. E. Frye'' (Bay State Publishing Co., Hyde Park, Mass.), setting forth a method of teaching geography in which sand-modeling is an important feature. The author maintains that pupils should be led to regard the land areas as possessing not only length and breadth, but also the very important dimension of height, "which divides the surface into the great slopes that form the river-basins, determine rainfall and drainage, distribute soil as food for plants, and thus prepare the earth to become the home of man." He advises that the study begin with modeling the district about the school-house, and shows by illustrative lessons and lists of questions how ideas of the forces acting upon land and water, of the plant-and animal life, and of human occupations and interests in the vicinity, may be developed. As the next step he puts the study of the earth's surface as a whole, "first, because the globe is the simplest whole; and, second, because the globe study alone can lead to those relations to heat, winds, and rainfall which enable the pupil to take the next step in the science." The continents, he says, should be studied later as parts of the globe structure. As with the district, he shows how the subjects of forces, life, and man are to be taught in the department of foreign geography.

Three Kingdoms: a Handbook of the Agassiz Association, by Harlan H. Ballard (Writers' Publishing Co., New York, 75 cents), was written "to serve instead of a personal reply to the inquiries concerning the Agassiz Association." It comprises first an account of the organization, whose object is to aid young people in the collection, study, and preserving of natural objects and facts; then directions for organizing a chapter of the Association and a plan of work. In the following chapters are given suggestions for work with plants, insects, birds and their eggs, minerals, and archaeological specimens. Exchanging specimens, books to read, taking notes, more about the Association, and various hints and helps, occupy the remaining chapters.

The first of a series of "Nature Readers," with the title Sea-side and Way-side, has been written by Julia McNair Wright (Heath, 25 cents). It is intended for children who are beginning to read, and consists of descriptions in simple language of the structure and habits of insects and shell-fish, its peculiar aim being to interest the child in natural objects while he is learning to read.

Profs. Oscar Oldberg and John H. Long have published A Laboratory Manual of Chemistry (W. T. Keener, $3.50), for students of medicine and pharmacy. As described in the preface, "it contains experiments intended to familiarize the student with the properties of the principal elements, lessons in synthetical chemistry, a systematic course in qualitative analysis, examples in quantitative determinations, including the official methods of assay for a few important drugs, and a short chapter on the chemical and microscopical examination of urine." An appendix contains lists of apparatus and reagents, and tables of weights, solubilities, etc. The volume is illustrated with figures of apparatus, and plates showing the appearance of various crystals, corpuscles, casts, etc.

Photography applied to Surveying, by Lieutenant Henry A. Reed, U. S. A. (Wiley, $2.50), is a treatise on a subject on which little seems to have been yet published outside of France. The author, having been strongly impressed with the value of photography in his own practice, has prepared an account of the method for the use of surveyors in this country. He describes the instruments and materials required, and the mode of procedure, in the methods by plane perspectives, cylindric and radial perspectives, and gives an account of telescopic and balloon photography. He states as the advantages of photographic surveying that the field-work may be performed with great rapidity, and with an economy of men and material unattainable by other means; there is no fear of having omitted some important point, and no occasion for rejecting doubtful observations; the plotting presents no difficulties, and abundant means of checking results are afforded. The volume is a thin quarto, and is illustrated with fifty-eight cuts and a photographic map.