Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/290

278 in the possession of various historical societies, the diaries of John Hull and Judge Sewall, and various town histories and other historical works. Numerous specific references to sources are given in foot-notes. Appendixes contain a list of prices of labor and commodities in different years from 1630 to 1789, examples of early accounts, reminiscences of Samuel Slater, the first cotton manufacturer in America, etc. An index of fifty pages makes all the references to any topic easily accessible.

is a work on chemical philosophy adapted to college students who have some acquaintance with descriptive chemistry. An especially notable feature of it is the pains taken by the author to make his subject plain, and to give the student just ideas in regard to the relative importance and trustworthiness of the results which the science has thus far attained. To this fact the large size of the volume is chiefly due. As it is not designed for those who intend to go into the higher aspects of the science, the higher mathematics has not been employed. Another feature of the work is the connected account it gives of the discoveries of van't Hoff in regard to solution and those of Arrhenius concerning electrolytic dissociation, made within the last three or four years, and not yet generally recognized by English-speaking chemists. The translating is evidently well done, but the inconvenient German style of index is retained.

The papers and discussions found in the Circular of Information No. 2, issued by the United States Bureau of Education in 1889, are especially valuable to those interested in the question of educational methods. In The Relation of Manual Training to Body and Mind, Prof. Woodward gives an outline of the work undertaken in the St. Louis Manual Training School. This department of Washington University has been in operation nine years, and the verbatim reports of parents show that the students are not only physically benefited by this system, but accomplish as much mentally and develop greater zest for acquirement than when trained merely in an intellectual direction. Dr. Harris, treating of the psychology, gives his reasons for preferring the drill in reading, geography, arithmetic, and especially grammar, to any discipline in tool-work. He insists upon the distinction between higher and lower faculties; that "we do not get at the true reality by sense perception but by thought"—"man elevates himself above the brute creation by his ability to withdraw his attention from the external world of the senses and give attention to forces, causes, principles." The province of the school, therefore, is to make the pupil master of the tools of thought, to furnish him "with means for availing himself of the mental products of the race." Superintendent Seaver gives, as a result of experience, that "such instruction takes a strong hold on the minds of a large class of boys who are either not so well reached, or not reached at all, by the subjects and methods of teaching current in the older high schools." Other suggestive papers are those on Psychology in its Relation to Pedagogy, by Dr. Butler; How can Manual Training be introduced into Ungraded Schools? by Prof. Allen; and The State and Higher Education, by Superintendent Campbell and Prof. Adams. The discussions on the training of teachers and on the value of examinations will tend to alter the gauge of any narrow-minded educator who may read them.

A History of Education in Alabama, prepared by Willis G. Clark, is the subject of CiruclarCircular [sic] of Information No. 3, 1889. This is the eighth monograph in the series, and, apart from its historical and local worth, it is deserving of study as an exhibit of intellectual growth remote from well-recognized centers. The fact that Alabama has possessed a State institution of learning for seventy years, supplying from one of her professors a President for Columbia College—the late Dr. Barnard—and that Howard College, in the same State, has furnished Harvard with a Professor of Hebrew and Assyrian, shows that the East and North do not monopolize thoroughness in scholarship. It is well to learn that "the Southern city of Mobile, in 1853, could boast of a public