Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/285

Rh is brought more directly under view in Dr. T. R. Buckham's paper on the "Right and Wrong" Test in Insanity, in which it is maintained that the subject may be irresponsible, if acting under insane impulses, even if he is aware that the deed he is committing is wrong.—Mr. A. Wood Renton, discussing the question of Testamentary Capacity in Mental Disease, collates what the courts have defined as the law on that subject, maintains that the issue on that point should be narrowed, when it arises, to the question,"Was this man capable of making this particular will at the time of its execution?"

The Commonwealth is the name of a monthly magazine of 144 pages, published by the Commonwealth Publishing Company, Denver, Col., which in June, 1889, had reached its fourth number. Among several stories and miscellaneous articles, we find two or three relating to the early history of Colorado. Of such are "Glimpses of Early Days," describing the site and surroundings of Denver in 1856, before there was a town or house there; a relation of remarkable trials and executions by extemporized courts that took place in the primitive times of "thirty years ago"; and an account of the attempt to set up a Territory of Jefferson in 1859, while the region of Denver was still technically Arapahoe County, Kansas. The effect of a pungent paper, suggesting condemnation of the awkward attitudes into which religious newspapers sometimes place themselves with regard to politics, is neutralized by the editor's depreciation of civil-service reform.

Dr. T. D. Crothers, in a paper asking Should Inebriates be punished by Death for Crime? and Dr. Joseph Parrish, in The Legal Responsibility of Inebriates, argue against treating inebriate criminals as if they were responsible, and in favor of subjecting them to the same kind of treatment as is given to the insane.

Six additional numbers of the Modern Science Essayist, a monthly publication of lectures and essays on topics immediately related to evolution, invite attention. In the first of the group, No. 1, on "The Descent of Man," Prof. Cope traces the descent in lines not greatly different from those drawn by Prof. Topinard in a recent number of the "Monthly," and insists that man is still subject to the struggle for existence. In "The Evolution of Mind," Dr. R. G. Eccles argues that the elaborate mental functions of man have been gradually developed from the simplest beginnings. In "Evolution of Society," Mr. James A. Skilton treats society as an organism, capable of growth, of decrease as well as increase; of vitality, of disease as well as of health; and of death and decay as well as of life and growth all by the operation of natural law. In "Evolution of Theology," Mr. Z. Sidney Sampson assumes that the tendency of the general movement of the theistic conception is along the same lines as in scientific thought, from narrower to wider generalization; following the natural order of the evolution of the mind, when free, from lower to higher ideals. In "Evolution of Ethics," Mr. Lewis G. Janes considers the individual as the chief concern, and the individual character as the supreme end, by the perfection of which only society can be perfected. In the. twelfth number of the series, the "Proofs of Evolution" are summed up by Mr. Nelson C. Parshall as derivable from astronomy, geology, morphology, embryology, metamorphosis, rudimentary organs, geographical distribution, discovered links, artificial breeding, reversion, and mimicry.

Alphonse Daudet's La Belle Nivernaise, or the story of a river barge and its crew, has been selected by Prof. James Boielle as the "ideal" reading-book in French for the junior classes of high schools and the higher classes of preparatory schools. Having been written for the author's ten-year-old son, it is commended as a striking example of "a great intellect coming down to the level of a child of tender years, and telling in short, simple, and pithy sentences, pregnant in meaning, the story of the loving sympathy of the poor for their poorer and more defenseless brethren. The notes give clear definitions of idiomatic expressions, with explanations of etymologies and allusions. Ginn & Co.

Three numbers—7, 8, 9—of the seventh series of the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science are occupied with a paper on The River Towns