Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/868

848 by new theories. A historical sketch of past studies and treatises on expression is given. Of authors of the old school, Lavater is found to have come the nearest to being scientific. The real science begins with Camper, from whom the famous facial angle took its name. But the great anatomists and physicists who preceded Darwin only touched one side of the problem—expression in its relation to art and the aesthetic. Darwin traced the general laws which govern expression in the whole animal kingdom; and in his book, published only in 1872, expression, in so far as it is a special branch of comparative biology, asserted itself as a new science. In the science of the present day we have, on one side, a study of the human countenance, which is associated with anatomy and anthropology, and, for its application, with all the plastic sciences; and, on the other side, a study of expression, and of expression in relation to psychology, to comparative ethnology, "the applications of which interest in turn painter, sculptor, and actor," The present book proposes "modestly to restore to anthropology and to psychology what belongs to either, and to make known the positive documents which we possess to-day on the human countenance and on expression." Two diverse and important functions are accorded to physical expression—it may replace or complete language, and it may defend the nerve-centers and other parts of the body against dangers of different kinds. Including all living beings in a general view, we may, according to the author, say that the expression of emotion augments in intensity and variety as the animal rises to a higher scale and becomes more sociable. These two maxims concerning the office and the development of expression, which we have selected from the observations in the chapter on the Language of Expression, indicate the importance and interest of the study. The first part of the treatise is devoted to the human face, its several features, and its comparative morphology; the second part to the expression of the emotions, in which, besides what are usually understood under that term, are included the minor emotions or feelings, the expression of thought, the general expressions of repose and action, disquietude, etc., and racial and professional expression, with additional chapters on the moderators and disturbers of expression, criteria for the determination of the strength of an emotion by the degree of expression, for judging the moral worth of a physiognomy and the intellectual value of a face, and on the physiognomy of gestures and the expression of clothes. While the scientific is predominant in the method of the book, a kind of literary discursiveness is frequently indulged in which supplies pleasant reading supplementary to the solid principles of the bulk of the text.

survey was continued through 1889 on the lines planned by Dr. Cook before his death, which occurred on the 22d of September. A leading object in the work has been, as heretofore, to develop and make public the natural products and resources of the State. The present volume bears evidence, continuing and additional to that given in previous volumes, of the success with which this object has been met. The geodetic survey was continued during the year, after having been suspended in 1888, southerly and westerly from the line—Hammerton-Newfield—which was reached in 1887. In a section on the archæan rocks, Mr. Frank L. Nason gives a historical review of what has been done in the Archæan Highlands since 1836; and continues with a report of the field-work of the year, descriptions of the type rocks of the region and their distribution, studies of the economic value of rocks, and special notes on the zircon and molybdenite found there. The section on Water-Supply and Artesian Wells, by Mr. C. C. Vermeule, includes accounts of the measures which have been taken to secure a water-supply to several cities and towns, and notes of the observations made in boring nearly thirty artesian wells in different parts of the State. The borings of a well at Atlantic City, to a depth of about 1,400 feet, show that the Quaternary gravels and sands are over 200 feet thick, and the strata under them to 1,225 feet are Miocene, while below that depth no fossil is yet found distinctive