Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/438

242 of our homes, offices, and factories were more perfect than it is. In this book the accounts of the modes of action of climates, forms of exercise, kinds of labor, etc., are brought together and presented in intelligible shape. Published in Philadelphia by F. A. Davis.

The third of the Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, published by Columbia College, is a History of Municipal Land Ownership on Manhattan Island, by George Ashton Black (Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, 50 cents). Mr. Black describes the transactions and policy of the city of New York concerning land from 1654, when, under the name of New Amsterdam, it acquired its first piece of real estate, down to the beginning of sales by the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund in 1844. Sixteen maps of parts of the city accompany the monograph.

The U. S. Artillery School at Fort Monroe, Va., has begun the publication of a quarterly magazine called the Journal of the United States Artillery. The first number contains articles on the motion and velocity of projectiles, our artillery organization, and the Chilian Navy. The subscription price is $2.50 a year.

The New World is a quarterly review of religion, ethics, and theology, the first number of which has been issued recently (Houghton, $3 a year). It is under the charge of an editorial board consisting of Profs. C. C. Everett and C. H. Toy, of Harvard University, President Orello Cone, of Buchtel College, and Rev. N. P. Gilman, author of The Laws of Daily Conduct, the last named being the managing editor. The prospectus states that "the new quarterly will be open to able and constructive thinkers, without regard to sectarian lines. The New World which its editors have in mind is that which is developing under the light of modern science, philosophy, criticism, and philanthropy—all of which, rightly viewed, are the friends and helpers of enduring religious faith. To positive and constructive statements of such an order of things, as distinguished from the old world of sectarianism, obscurantism, and dogmatism, the New World is pledged." Each number will contain 200 pages. In the first number the opening article is on The Evolution of Christianity, by Lyman Abbott; and other contributors are C. C. Everett, J. G. Schurman, W. R. Alger, C. H. Toy, J. E. Carpenter, T. R. Sheer, E. H. Hall, and C. B. Upton. There is a department of Book Reviews, and in future it is intended to have in each number a survey of current periodical literature on religious subjects. The New World frankly admits the influence which the doctrine of evolution and the scientific method of research are exerting in the field of religion, and promises well to become a force that shall carry this influence onward to a more perfect freedom and to an unrestricted acceptance of the truth.

The poems by H. L. Gordon, in the handsome volume entitled The Feast of the Virgins and other Poems, having been printed for the author's friends rather than for the public, are hardly subjects for criticism. They were for the most part composed during the author's life in the Northwest—on the frontiers of civilization—and bear the marks of the personal acquaintances which he says he has had with Indians of the Dakota and Ojibway nations. A considerable proportion of them relate to Indian subjects, and, in versifying Dakota legends, the attempt has been made to present faithfully many of the customs and superstitions and some of the traditions of that people. While very little poetic license has been taken with their traditions, none has been taken with their customs and superstitions. These poems may therefore be regarded as contributions to Indian lore. Published in Chicago by Laird & Lee.

Simeon Pease Cheney, author of the American Singing-Book, was a musician and music teacher, who lived thirty summers in a bird-haunted grove, and who took notice of bird songs in Vermont, New Hampshire; St. Lawrence County, New York; and southern Massachusetts. In his sixty-seventh year, with no authorities but his own observations—for he never read but four books about birds, and these not till more than half the work he accomplished was done—he undertook the collection of New England bird-songs. His intention was to write a book for the young people of New England, to be made up of bird-songs and observations on the domestic animals, with special reference to their several forms of utterance, and of notices of the music of inanimate things. He died with his work unfinished in May, 1890. His notes