Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/873

Rh what he would have considered his most important service was the defense of the New Hampshire Grants. This part of the story reminds us much of some of the scenes of the territorial history of Kansas. There is the same mixture of lawlessness and submission to the law that the Free State men showed there. It was a singular position the New Hampshire grantees were in, of acknowledging the political sovereignty of New York, and opposing with violence its conveyance of the lands they claimed by another title. The story is well told, largely in the words of the original documents. Another most curious feature in Allen's career is revealed in his coquetting with the British for the recognition of Vermont's position, even at the expense of the United States. As it is shown in this book, his conduct appears to have been controlled by sound reason. Congress had not recognized Vermont, and had refused to admit it to the Union. What claim had the Government on the allegiance of Allen or other Vermonters who were thus denationalized, and forced, as it were, to look out for Vermont alone? Allen was ready to negotiate with Great Britain or any authority that would secure Vermont's independent position—and that was all there was of it. The story of Allen's capture at Montreal, his captivity and imprisonment, is graphically told, wholly in his own words.

this book claims to be no more than a popular treatise, pains have been taken to give it that character. It is a fairly full treatise as to European archæology, but less so as to American, although most of the more important recent American work is mentioned. The subject is dealt with to date, and in a very satisfactory manner. The earlier chapters are occupied with the consideration of the geological periods as they relate to the appearance of man with animals in the Tertiary, and man in the Post-tertiary, the primeval condition of man, the mastodon and other animals contemporary with early man, and the presumed domestic life of nomadic man (as primitive man was supposed to be). The older stone or palaeolithic age is characterized as the age of ponderous flint clubs. Two chapters are given severally to the cave-dwellers in Britain, and the cave-dwellers of other countries than Britain—in which notice is taken of American relics. Pursuing the subject, the author finds a gap in the scale of gradation between the close of the cave era and an advanced system of weapons in which light projectiles form the leading feature—the newer stone or neolithic age. This is described with considerable detail, both as to the weapons and the articles of domestic use, and is illustrated by a page of engravings of typical mound-builders' arrow-heads. The mound-builders have a chapter, and are supposed to have been of a civilization about equal to that of the Swiss lake-dwellers, and of no higher antiquity. A chapter each is devoted to the several topics of kitchen-middens; the age of bronze, pronounced the shortest of the three ages, the lake-dwellers, pottery, the iron age, sepulture (cairns, cromlechs or dolmens, barrows, etc.), fossil man, myth, and art. The author regards myth as not the invention of early man, but the fruit of a period of growth; and supposes that the works of art found among the relics, were the productions of specially gifted persons, of whom there may not have been more than one or two in an age, and that they can not be regarded as indicating any extended art sense.

this work, after an exposition of general principles in the introduction, information and instruction are given in drawing, the varieties, qualities, etc., of timber and other materials, bench-work, and the arrangement and fittings of the workroom—furnishing, among other things, the items of a complete equipment for a class of twenty boys. The chapter on bench-work contains twenty-three exercises in mechanical operations of wood-working, and thirty models of articles that may be made. A preface is supplied by Mr. George Ricks, who defines manual training as "a special training of the senses of sight, touch, and muscular perception by