Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/873

Rh to be a missionary; studying for that, he lost his faith in dogmatic Christianity, but found his religious ideals purified, and became a missionary of a religion which knows no dogmas; which is not in conflict with Christianity; which can never come in conflict with science, and is not in conflict with any other religion; "for it is the goal and aim of all religions."

Very different from the reverential spirit of Dr. Carus's Homilies is the tone of Mr, G. H. Martinis Antidotes for Superstition, which comes to us from Watts & Co., London, and which we can only describe as a vehement attack on Christianity, its origins and purport. In the first chapter—on Christian Veracity—the charge is made that the method of teaching biblical history and chronology in the seminaries "is one of organized misrepresentation and systematic concealment of facts," and that the rest of Christian instruction is of the same kind. In the second chapter the essential spirit of Christianity is described as "a most malign, subtle, and Protean spirit." The assignment of other similar traits is followed by attempts to show, in Christianity before Christ and Pre-Christian Gospels, that what is good in Christianity is of more ancient origin and is common to pagan religions; and by "ammunition for our recruits" in the shape of supplied answers for persons unskilled in debate, to the arguments of the apologists for Christianity.

The Commission of Fish and Fisheries has issued the Report of the Commission for 1887, which covers the whole of that year and the first half of 1888. Future reports will cover the fiscal year of the Government instead of the calendar year, as heretofore. In the summer of 1887 occurred the death of Prof. Baird, who had been commissioner since 1871. The duties of the office were performed for about six months by Dr. G. Brown Goode, and the Hon. Marshall McDonald was then appointed commissioner. The work of the eighteen months covered by this volume is reviewed in the commissioner's report, and to it are appended an account of the Fisheries of the Great Lakes, by H. M. Smith, M. M. Snell, and J. W. Collins; a Report upon the Division of Fisheries, by J. W. Collins; reports on the distribution of fish and eggs by the commission, and on the work of the steamer Albatross; reports on the construction and equipment of the schooner Grampus, by J. W. Collins; on the operations of the Grampus, by J. W. and D. E. Collins; a Review of the Labroid Fishes of America and Europe, by David Starr Jordan; a paper on Lake Superior Entomostraca, by S. A. Forbes; and one on Entozoa of Marine Fishes of New England, by Edwin Linton. All these papers are fully illustrated.

The Sixth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, being the report for 1890, is devoted to statistics of the cost of producing iron and steel. It makes a volume of fourteen hundred pages, and is divided into three parts, of which the first gives the cost of labor, raw materials, and other elements that enter into the total cost of production; the second is devoted to the time and earnings of laborers, and the efficiency of labor; while the third part, comprising eight hundred pages, shows the cost of the laborers' living, in detail. Establishments in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe, as well as in the United States, were included in the investigation. This is one of the reports on the cost of producing dutiable articles which are called for in the act of Congress establishing the Department of Labor, and throws a vast amount of light upon the question of how much protection the iron and steel industries need in order to continue the present wages of American workmen.

The fifth of the lists of special classes of novels, compiled by W. M. Griswold, is a Descriptive list of British Novels (the author, Cambridge, Mass., $2), comprising over nine hundred titles. Each entry is accompanied by from a few lines to half a page of description, which in most cases is taken from a review in some prominent literary periodical. We can join heartily with Mr Griswold in the hope that "the publication of this and similar lists will lessen, in some measure, the disposition to read an inferior new book when superior old books, equally fresh to most readers, are at hand." There are no antiquated books in the list before us—the oldest that we note arc some of George Eliot's which appeared in 1859 and 1860. Surely no apology is needed for going back far enough to include these.