Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/580

562 in translations through the French or in direct translations by persons who know Russian only imperfectly. The first of the stories, Ivan the Fool, portrays Tolstoi's communistic ideas and the ideal kingdom he would establish in which each and every person should be a worker and a producer. A Lost Opportunity pictures Russian peasant life, with many of its peculiar customs. Polikushka describes the life led by a servant in a nobleman's court household, and marks the difference in the conditions and surroundings of such servants from those of ordinary peasants.

An exhibition of ten years' progress of the "New Learning" is made in Prof. A. F. Chamberlain's pamphlet on Modern Languages and Classics in America and Europe since 1880. It presents the views of numerous teachers and persons interested in education concerning the success with which the scheme for giving more relative attention to the modern languages has met in the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Germany, and Norway and Sweden. Published at the office of The Week, Toronto.

Mr. Henry George's Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII on The Condition of Labor is a respectful, temperate reply to those parts of his Holiness's Labor Encyclical which bear on the doctrines held by the school of publicists of which the author is the most conspicuous representative. It is of value and interest to us chiefly because it presents a clear, succinct, and precise statement of what the doctrines of that school are, what they are seeking, and of the manner in which they purpose to promote their objects by peaceful agitation.

In a manual on The Sextant and other Reflecting Mathematical Instruments (D. Van Nostrand Company, 50 cents), Mr. F. R. Brainard, of the United States Navy, presents a compilation from various sources on the instruments concerned, and adds a few ideas and suggestions of his own, and of officers who have been associated with him; embodying also practical hints on the errors, adjustments, and use of the instruments.

In a manual of the handy Van Nostrand Science Series, How to become an Engineer, the theoretical and practical training necessary in fitting for the duties of a civil engineer are set forth by Prof. George W. Plympton, who supplements his views by quotations from the opinions of eminent authorities and full lists of the courses of study in the technical schools—including the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an example of American schools, and several schools of England and the European continent. Price, 50 cents.

Light, an Elementary Treatise (Macmillan & Co., I0 cents), has been prepared by Sir Henry Trueman Wood with a view of providing such information as an intelligent student unfamiliar with natural science would require. In it are given an explanation of the modern theory of light and of the phenomena which are matters of common observation; descriptions of the nature of color and the manner of its production; accounts of the more important optical instruments and the principles of their action; an exposition of the chemical effects of light and their application in photography; and descriptions of the phenomena produced by polarized light and by fluorescence. The book is one of the numbers of Whittaker's Libraiy of Popular Science.

Information about electric lighting, practical and theoretical, is given in the Practical Treatise on the Incandescent Lamp, prepared by J. E. Randall, Electrician of the Thomson-Houston Company, and published by the Bubier Publishing Company, Lynn, Massachusetts. It contains, in brief, the history of incandescent lighting, the philosophy and construction, with details, of the incandescent lamp, and observations on photometers and their use. The author estimates that 25.000 incandescent lights are made in the United States daily, or 7,500,000 a year, and he believes that the "life" of the lamp is more likely to be abbreviated than increased in the future, because consumers will grow more particular about the quality of their light, and will change their burners when they cease to be efficient instead of using them till they burn out.

Prof. Wesley Mills, believing that a dog is a useful member of the household and especially valuable in the city as a companion and means of instruction for the children, and recognizing the embarrassment city families labor under through not knowing how to manage with the animal in their narrow