Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/432

418

this book the author presents his subjects in a conversational rather than a formal style, and varies the statement of the scientific principles on which every such treatise must rest with practical directions and illustrative incident. The book can be read with pleasure and amusement as well as with instruction; and if sticklers for form object that in some parts it is hardly dignified enough for science, the author may reply that his book conveys useful knowledge which is none the less knowledge or useful because it is so presented as to be entertaining and easy reading. In the first chapters, which deal with evolution, the Law of Life and Growth, Man's Spiritual and Physical Place in Nature, and kindred topics, are discussed. Weissmann's views on the hereditability of acquired faculties are often referred to, with a disposition to dissent from Weissmann and accept the doctrine of hereditability. The source of the beauty of the fair sex, and the effect of environment and training on the physique, are considered; then the elements of grace, with a chapter on the Art of Walking; the care of the skin and the breath; cosmetic art as applied to the face, hands, feet, hair, and teeth; the care of the eye, ear, and nose; food, clothing, and ventilation; the circulation and digestion; and, in the latter chapters, lists of cosmetic articles, medicated soaps, and household remedies are given.

matter of this book was written by special request for a young wife whose education on subjects bearing on her prospective duties as a mother had been insufficient. It furnishes suggestions on subjects of general and obvious interest which might be advantageously worked out in daily home life. Its aim is to enable the mother to second more intelligently the efforts of the medical adviser when he comes professionally into the family, and to offer some practical considerations affecting woman in her family relation. The successive sections of the book treat of the care of the infant from the moment of birth; the child, its training and education; the girl at the age of puberty, and the instruction it is proper to give her then; the wife; and general suggestions upon health.

author has undertaken in this little book to describe briefly the mineral constituents and internal structures of the igneous rocks, their mode of occurrence at the surface, and their origin beneath the crust of the earth. After a few pages of introductory matter, he begins the particular descriptions of the rocks, taking them by groups. Each rock receives a paragraph, in which its chemical composition, crystalline form, hardness, and other characteristics are given, and its mode of occurrence is stated. There is also an extended chapter on the classification and description of the igneous rocks, which gives the distribution of each group in the British Isles. The volume contains forty-three illustrations.

chapters have been prepared under a feeling of the need of some convenient statement of ordinary banking operations, experienced by the writer when lecturing upon banking to a large class of students in political economy. To the chapters devoted to such operations it was found useful to add a series of historical chapters on certain of the great banks and banking systems. Special chapters have also been added on combined reserves, or the system of clearing-house loan certificates, and the Bank of Amsterdam; and the whole has been revised and the notices of current history have been brought down to the present date.

It is hard to speak too highly of the value of Appalachia, the periodical and organ of the Appalachian Mountain Club. It serves, in one department of geographical science, a similar purpose with the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, and