Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/286

276 homology), and reciprocation. In order to avoid the difficulty of framing a general geometrical theory of imaginary points and lines, the principle of continuity is appealed to. The properties of circular points and circular lines are then discussed, and applied to the theory of the foci of conics. This work is also well furnished with examples. (Macmillan & Co. Price, $4.25 and $2.60.)

The Primary Lessons and the Advanced Lessons in Human Physiology, by Prof. Oliver P. Jenkins, are successive volumes in the Indiana State series of common-school textbooks. The author insists that the books be used only as a guide to the study of the human body, and not as the object to be studied. "If this or any other elementary book in physiology is used simply as a book to be learned and recited, the time spent on it is worse than wasted." The author shows that many parts of the body can be put directly under study and their operations carefully observed and analyzed, while the lower animals can furnish the rest of the illustrations. The body should also be observed in action. Charts and drawings have their place in the teaching, but "they should come after the objects and never before, and certainly should not stand for them." In the second book of the series—Advanced Lessons—directions are introduced for the practical demonstration of many anatomical and physiological facts. Recognizing the change that has come in recent years over the tone and spirit of physiological thought and discussion, the author has endeavored to infuse enough of this spirit into his work "to introduce even the young student into its influence." (Indiana Schoolbook Company, Indianapolis.)

A Students Manual of a Laboratory Course in Physical Measurements, by Wallace Clement Sabine, is a guide to experiments. It was primarily written for one of the Harvard courses in physics, and the experiments detailed in it are based upon those performed in that course. It has been given the form of an abstract of the daily lectures preceding the laboratory work and describing the experiments to be performed, and is intentionally condensed. Efforts are made to explain all the corrections to be applied, and to call attention to all the precautions which should be taken in the accurate and proper performance of the experiments. On the other hand, in the majority of cases, the description is purposely not such as will admit of a mechanical and unintelligent interpretation. (Boston: Ginn & Co.)

The second part of Jane H. Newell's Reader in Botany contains selections for reading, adapted from well-known authors, on flower and fruit. In it Christian Conrad Sprengel is represented by passages on Cross-Fertilization and Fertilization of Tropæolum, Darwin in Cross-Fertilization, Heterostyled Flowers, and the Habits of Insects in Relation to Flowers, writers in the German Pflanzenleben in The Protection of Pollen, The Dissemination of Pollen by the Wind, and The Color of Flowers as a Means of attracting Insects; Wallace in Attractive and Protective Colors of Fruits; Gray in Fertilization of Orchids; Grant Allen and Byron D. Halsted in Weeds; F. L. Sargent in The Common Dandelion; Sir John Lubbock in Habits of Insects in Relation to Flowers; Miss Buckley in Epochs in the History of Botany; and four papers have no names attached. (Boston: Ginn & Co.)

The Orum System of Voice Education, for reading and conversation, recitation, dramatic expression, and Bible reading, by Julia A. Orum, is based on the system of James Fennell, as transmitted through his pupil, L. G. White, and Mr. White's pupil, James B. Roberts. The author has made its illustration and establishment her special work for sixteen years. The book is a transcription of her method of instruction in schools and classes which include children and men and women of various vocations. It is based upon physiological principles, and begins with the elucidation of the elemental functions of the body in the expression of sentences. (Published by the author at Philadelphia.)

The Manual of Current Shorthand—orthographic and phonetic—of Mr. Henry Sweet is intended to supply the want of a system of writing shorter and more compact than longhand, and at the same time not less distinct and legible. None of the systems most in use at the present time, the author affirms, fully meet these requirements, because they sacrifice efficiency to brevity. The present system is on a script basis instead of a geometrical one, like Pitman's—that is, is formed on its model of ordinary longhand, reduced