Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/870

852 increase among all civilized peoples, whether their racial predisposition be great or small, and as racial proclivity remains fixed, the author concludes that all, or nearly all, the increase must be the outcome of the acquired or pathological character.

The influences of race, of climate and season, of religion, and of sex and age are considered as factors in causing suicide.

In regard to the stand taken by the law in reference to suicide, the author says that he does not believe that pronouncing suicide a crime has ever stayed the hand of a single individual bent on self-destruction, and the law has never been able to punish the criminal in a single instance, nor can it hope to. There are only two logical courses open to those who would reform this legislative absurdity. One is to sweep away all legislation upon the subject so far as it relates to the individual himself, no longer consider suicide a crime, and ignore attempts thereat. The other is to enact that all attempts at suicide, whether successful or not, be in themselves conclusive evidence of dangerous insanity. The author, agreeing with the Sophists, Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists, believes that the first of these two is the more just and sensible course.

The author considers the theological, naturalistic, sociological, and moral objections to suicide, and concludes with old Dr. Donne that "self-homicide is not so naturally sin that it may never be otherwise."

The author has presented a very interesting and unbiased study of a topic that is engaging more and more attention, for it is not one of the least of the charges against modern society that its organization is such that men and women are unwilling to continue as associates thereof.

author is to be congratulated on this little work that is a concise exposition of the various matters connected with the performance of post-mortem examinations. He has not endeavored to enter into a systematic and minute consideration of the pathological changes in the organs, but rather he has made it his aim to give such general and comprehensive information as is needed by the examiner.

As no State in the Union has prescribed regulations to guide and direct the practitioner in the method of making necropsies in medico legal cases, it is believed that the systematic procedure detailed in this book will make it useful to all practitioners of medicine likely to be called upon to perform such duty.

The work is admirably printed and illustrated, and is one of the best books on this topic with which we are acquainted.

of literature and art will find a most attractive handbook in this volume.

While it does not take the place of a dictionary of reference, where every dryad may be traced to her favored tree by the classical scholar, it includes all the more important myths celebrated in song, sculpture, or painting.

The illustrations alone comprise seventyone reproductions of famous works of art. The text is bright and interesting, and in conclusion an analysis of myths is given, the philological interpretation receiving the preference. The work is also generously furnished with aids to the reader, containing a classical map and genealogical chart as well as glossary and index.

naturalists generally are impelled to their life work by an ardent love of Nature, it is rare to find among them in early youth such glowing enthusiasm as that exhibited by William Kitchen Parker.

The son of an English farmer, only a scanty education had been afforded him when he began, as a lad, his loving study of bird and flower in his father's field. Apprenticed at the age of fifteen to a druggist, he read physiology while compounding sheep ointment, and rose at four o'clock in the morning to have three hours' botanizing in the woods. In two summers he had collected