Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/872

854 a great aid. It contains an appendix consisting of useful tables for calculating total solids, etc. (It is published by P. Blakiston, Son & Co., Philadelphia. Pp. 89. Price, $1.)

A collection of Bulls and Blunders, compiled by Marshall Brown (Griggs, $1), has recently been issued. It is a large and amusing collection, and besides being amusing it is instructive, for where the blunder consists in a faulty arrangement of words, the way to correct it is pointed out.

Under the title. The Monism of Man, David Allyn Gorton, M. D., has put forth a mingled mass of scientific facts and supernatural speculations (Putnam, $2). The book is a hard one to describe. It is not a descriptive treatise on the subject indicated by its title, for it does not even tell anywhere what the "monism of man" is. It can not be called a disputation, for it does not attempt to prove anything in particular. It is rather a pleasant, extended essay, in which a man versed in a scientific profession and well read in classic literature and religious lore has set down some things that he knows and others that he believes, together with many quotations from favorite authors, and his own reflections upon the material thus brought together.

From the University of far-away Tasmania comes, by way of an English printing office, an essay on Utility of Quaternions in Physics, written by A. McAulay, in competition for a prize offered by the University of Cambridge (Macmillan, $1.60). In a long and free-spoken preface the author states that the physical applications of quaternions are sadly neglected at Cambridge, in spite of Prof. Tait's powerful advocacy. He ranks himself as a disciple of Prof. Tait in promoting the study of this branch of mathematics, but feels compelled to differ from his master on certain points, some of which he sets forth in his preface. The divisions of physics to which he applies quaternions in this essay are elastic solids, electricity and magnetism, hydrodynamics, and the vortex atom theory. At the risk of being deemed a misdirected enthusiast he hopes for a "time when quaternions will appear in every physical text-book that assumes the knowledge of (say) elementary plane trigonometry."

In the Elements of Life Insurance, the author, Miles M. Dawson, has sought to give the reader a comprehensive and accurate conception of life insurance, without burdening his mind with needless technical terms; to write what will be most useful to beginners and so as to be intelligible to the general public mind. Besides the analysis of rates and reserves, the scope of the book covers the subject of contracts; their construction, application, nature, and legal effect. Insurance is defined as the equalization of fortune. By its provisions, a large number of men arrange to lose small sums in order that none of them may lose a great sum in a specified way. Thus it is the alliance of prudent men against misfortune. The book is published by the Independent Printing and Publishing Company, Chicago, at the price of two dollars.

The Outlines of Embryology of the Eye—the Cartwright Prize Essay for 1893—by Dr. Ward A. Holden, is the product of a study carried on at the New York Ophthalmic and Auric Institute, and is based upon the examination of a great number of specimens of eyes of chicks and pigs. Endeavoring to give a clear and comprehensive description of the development of the organ, the author has deemed it best to present first a brief and purely schematic sketch of the processes which take place, explaining them with diagrams, and next to give an accurate histological description of the various parts of the eye in their successive phases of development, illustrating these descriptions with careful drawings from actual preparations. (Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Price, 75 cents.)

Under the title Manual of Linguistics a great amount of material on the phonology of English and other languages has been brought together by John Clark, a master in the High School of Dundee (Putnam, $2). After an introductory chapter on the culture and original home of the Aryans, the sound relations in the Indo-European languages are considered at some length. From this subject the author passes to various modifications of vowels and consonants, such as assimilation, shortening, lengthening, prothesis, epenthesis, contraction, labialism, dentalism, rhotacism, reduplication, etc. The nearly related topics ablaut and accent are next considered. The operation of Grimm's law