Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/871

Rh in this one by seven chapters, two of which "are on subjects not treated in any former edition." In the second chapter, on the Principles and Theory of Vision with the Compound Microscope, the results of the past twenty years' labors of Dr. Abbe, of Jena, have been summarized in a manner that has received Dr. Abbe's hearty commendation. In treating many of the other topics Dr. Dallinger has had the aid of eminent specialists. The book is increased by two hundred and fifty pages over the size of the last edition. Great pains have been taken to bring the text up to the most recent knowledge of experts, and the illustrations have been increased by the addition of nineteen new plates, many being colored, and three hundred woodcuts, making the whole number over eight hundred.

best evidence of the usefulness of this book is that a second edition was required within a week from the publication of the first. After setting forth the value of phosphates in producing fertility of soils, the author describes in successive chapters the deposits of phosphates and the modes of mining them employed in Canada, South Carolina, and Florida. Lists of companies engaged in phosphate-mining, with their capitalization, are given, also the expenses of working, the equipment required, and the selling prices of the products. These chapters are illustrated with many views of mines, drying-sheds, and machinery for handling and treating the ores. The manufacture of sulphuric acid is then described, after which the making of superphosphates is treated, and a final chapter contains methods of analysis of the materials and products of these manufactures. The author states that the volume embodies many facts, figures, and suggestions resulting from long observation and an extremely varied practical experience, and he trusts that it will prove highly profitable to all classes of persons interested in the production, manufacture, sale, and consumption of commercial fertilizers. He has aimed to couch the information in common language, avoiding, as far as possible, chemical formulas and technical terms.

The first volume of a monograph on The Tannins has been published by Prof. Henry Trimble (Lippincott, $2). It contains chapters on the discovery, general characters, and the detection and estimation of tannins, followed by a detailed treatment of gallotannic acid. An index of authors, an index, or more properly a chronological table, of the literature of tannin, and a general index to the volume, are appended.

The Experiment's arranged for Students in General Chemistry, by Profs. Edgar F. Smith and Harry F. Keller (Blakiston), has reached a second and enlarged edition. It is adapted to beginners, and is not intended to displace the instructor, but rather to assist him. References are made to Richter'a Inorganic Chemistry, but any other suitable book may be used instead. Thirty-seven diagrams of apparatus are given, and questions and problems arc interspersed throughout the directions for experiments. The volume is interleaved with blank leaves for notes.

Radical Wrongs in the Precepts and Practices of Civilized Man, by J. Wilson (the author, Newark, N. J., $1), is devoted to condemning practices of modern social life that, in the opinion of the author, are wrong. Mr. Wilson denounces war, cruelty to animals, capital punishment, private ownership of land, taking payment for the use of money, disposing of property by will, etc., with equal emphasis.

The second volume of the exposition of the Hermetic Philosophy, by an editor who signs himself in an enigma (Styx, of the "H. B. of L."), is published by the J. D. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia ($1). The work as a whole includes lessons, general discourses, and explications of "fragments" from the schools of Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, Italy, Scandinavia, etc., designed for students of the Hermetic, Pythagorean, and Platonic sciences, and Western occultism. The present volume contains the second lesson on the Principles and Elements of Things, and a discourse from Porphyry on Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Nature. The introduction comprises a notice of Sanchoniathon, the ancient Phœenician philosopher and historian, and the text of the fragment of his Cosmogony and Theogony which has been preserved by Eusebius; and the