Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/584

568 of Aurora Borealis," "Thunder and Lightning," and "Miscellaneous Phenomena," embracing "temperatures of wells," of "river, rain, and cellar," "Extremes of Atmospheric Pressure or Temperature," "Solar Halos and Parhelia," lunar halos, and "General Remarks."—Vol. XX, Part II, of the same series records the Observations made at the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, Massachusetts, in 1888, with a statement of the local weather predictions, under the direction of A. Lawrence Rotch.

A paper on Domestic Economy in Public Education, by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is published in the series of "Educational Monographs" of the New York College for the Training of Teachers. The success of the manual training system that has been developed out of the carpentry classes for boys has prompted the author to look for a kindred course adapted to the life of girls. She finds it in domestic economy, in which the purposes of sanitary science and hygiene should play an important part. A schedule for a four years' course is introduced. In it cooking—"kitchen science"—is prominent, and this, the author insists, can be placed on a level with the use of workshop tools as a means of mental and physical training. Having mentioned the scientific principles involved in the processes of preparing a meal, the author maintains that "the school-girl who has had the elements of chemistry and physics, which are often taught as abstract sciences, summed up and applied to the making of a simple dish, has had her mind awakened to the relations and interdependence of things as no other training now given can awaken it." In an appendix are given summaries of the provisions made for teaching domestic economy in several public schools and colleges in the United States and in the girls' schools of the city of Paris.—Another number of the same series is an essay on Graphic Methods in Teaching, by Charles Barnard, with an introduction by Prof. John F. Woodhull, setting forth "Training in Natural Science as an Essential Factor in the Education of the Citizen." Mr. Barnard's essay embodies the relation of experiences in training children to the observation of natural facts and phenomena, and to keeping regular records of them by means of the graphic system, with specimens of the actual work of certain children in that line. Of the value to the child of thus recording weather observations the author says: "The making of the diagram (printed forms should never be used) is something in the way of mechanical drawing that is a good training for the hand and eye. Secondly, the diagram, being fastened upon the wall in some convenient place, becomes a reminder of stated work to be done at a fixed hour—a capital training in punctuality, promptness, and precision." Then the thermometer is a tool which the child learns to use. He is induced to go out of doors. Pride is taken in the work as it goes on, developing a regular course. It is instructive and a useful exercise in neatness and accuracy, and when it is done "the child has two graphic statements of real phenomena in nature observed by himself and so recorded that at the end the entire work of the month is plainly seen."

The Globe, a New Quarterly Review of World-Literature, Society, Religion, Art, and Politics, of which we have the first number, October to December, 1889, is projected by William Henry Thorne, in Chicago, to be a "first-class literary review," which he believes we have not; and he aspires "to edit and publish something better, broader, stronger, and more cosmopolitan" than any existing American periodical. After a careful inspection of his work we are forced to say with regret that he has not reached the object of his aspiration, and that the want he describes, if it existed before, is still un-supplied. The initial number of The Globe contains articles on "The Fuss about Bruno," "The English, French, and American Stage," "The Heroic and Commonplace in Art," "Emerson and his Biographers," "Socialism and Poetic Retribution," "Dr. McCosh and Modern Philosophy," etc.

Edenic Diet, the Philosophy of Eating for the Physical and Mental Man (Isaac B. Rumford, Santa Cruz, Cal., 25 cents), is intended primarily to exalt an exclusive vegetable diet and furnish recipes involving its principles. To this are added a mass of rhapsodical matter and a scheme for "an Edenic home" which those may enjoy to whose mode of thought they are adapted.

Mr. J. Madison Cutts, of Washington,