Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/869

Rh of the Eocene. The second volume of the Final Report is devoted to the mineralogy, botany, and zoölogy of the State; the first part comprising the mineralogy and botany. The minerals—for which, by reason of the great number of species and varieties, their rare chemical combinations, and their wonderful crystalline development, the localities of New Jersey are famous—are catalogued by Mr. Frederick A. Canfield, with the aid of the best collections. The Flora of the State is divided by Dr. N. L. Britton, who furnishes the catalogue, into a northern and a southern, the division between which is approximately indicated by the glacial moraine. A minor division includes the marine and coast group of plants, species, and varieties especially characteristic of the sea-beaches and salt or brackish marshes and meadows; and a fourth group is made of species of especial western distribution, which, however, have no special significance in the consideration of the origin of the flora. In all, 5,641 species and varieties of plants are catalogued.

appears to be both the title of this book and the pen-name of the author. The volume is made up of articles contributed to The Open Court over this signature, containing also two by Lyman J. Gage, written in controversy with "Wheelbarrow" over The Ethics of the Board of Trade. The articles are intended to present various topics of the labor question from the standpoint of a common laborer, which was the author's position in early life. His autobiography prefixed to the volume informs us, however, that he rose from the occupation of wheeling gravel on railways through the grades of country school-teacher and brickyard laborer to that of lawyer. He served in the army during the war with Mexico and the civil war, and attained the rank of brigadier-general, and we understand that he is General M. M. Trumbull, of Chicago. His portrait is inserted as a frontispiece to the book. The tone of the "Wheelbarrow" essays is against the revolutionary schemes of some who call themselves workingmen, and in favor of a manly Independence and a generous fraternity on the part of laborers, in their relations with their employers and with each other. On the money question he argues for a hundred cents' worth of silver in the silver dollar; he opposes Henry George's single-tax idea; and he charges the produce brokers with "making bread dear." The volume contains also three essays on The Poets of Liberty and Labor, namely, Gerald Massey, Robert Burns, and Thomas Hood. The articles are written in simple and picturesque language, and the views they contain are enforced by many anecdotes and fables.

author's purpose in writing this book has been to indicate that there is a natural history of disease as well as of plants and animals. It is difficult to define disease when our remarks are restricted to the human family; and it becomes obviously more difficult when we attempt it, as the author has done, on a broad zoölogical basis. It necessarily follows, he assumes, from the relations between man and the higher animals, "that there should be a similarity in the structural alterations induced by diseased conditions in all kinds of animals, allowing, of course, for the differences in environment. This we know to be the case, and it is clear that as there has been a gradual evolution of complex from simple organisms, it necessarily follows that the principles of evolution ought to apply to diseased conditions if they hold good for the normal or healthy states of organisms; in plain words, there has been an evolution of disease pari passu with evolution of animal forms." In view of the talk of physiological types of diseased tissues, the author's earlier efforts were directed to searching among animals for the purpose of detecting in them the occurrence of tissues which in man are found only under abnormal conditions. The hypothesis proved to be true in only a limited sense; but, "at the same time, the truth of an opinion held by nearly all thoughtful physicians—that disease may in many instances be regarded as exaggerated function—was