Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/289

Rh Passing to inflected and analytic tongues, the history of the Semites and the Indo-Europeans and their several languages is sketched. The rest of the volume—seven chapters—is devoted to a more detailed survey of the Indo-European family, its roots, parts of speech, compounds, and its phonetics being separately discussed. In the closing chapter the chief events in the history of the English and French languages are noted.

Believing that a training in physical measurement is the most solid basis of scientific knowledge, the author has prepared this book as a laboratory manual for an introductory course of study in science. It is devoted to simple measurements of length, mass, and time, and care has been taken to make the course logically progressive. The author hopes also that the book may serve in some degree to bridge over the space between the laboratory and other class rooms by acting as a "practical arithmetic," and to some extent as a "practical grammar." A large number of exercises on each variety of measurement are given, and the general character of the course is promising for thorough results.

In The Care and Feeding of Children (Appleton & Co., 50 cents) Dr. Emmett Holt offers a guide to mothers and nurses in the form of a catechism. The questions and answers were first prepared for the instruction of nursery maids, and pertain to the proper oversight of babies from a few days old to as many years. The directions have the merit of precision and of brevity; and, while many of the precautions are needless for healthy children, no harm can come in any case from following the rules given for infants over a year old.

As usual with books of its kind, the importance of rearing babies naturally is not sufficiently emphasized, and several suggestions tend to defeat such nurture. Patented foods are, however, rigorously condemned with reason, and this is perhaps more than might be expected, even of a doctor, in an artificial age.

The American Historical Register is a new periodical, begun with the September number, 1894, as a monthly gazette of the patriotic societies of our country, with Charles H. Browning as editor in chief and a number of men and women representing the patriotic societies as associate editors. It is intended to be generally historical, biographical, and genealogical in its scope, and to be a literary exchange and repository for American historical students. The first number contains an account of the work of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, and articles on the Hillegas family, the Daughters of Liberty; Major William Dyce, of New York; Stories of Colonial Families; General James Taylor, of Kentucky; General William Henry Harrison, Major George Croghan, and the Medal of Honor Legion. (Published at Philadelphia.)

A Laboratory Manual of Physics and Applied Electricity has been arranged and edited by Prof. Edward L. Nichols, from his own work and that of his associates in the department of physics in Cornell University, to supply in some measure the needs of a modern laboratory, in which the existing manuals of physics have been found inadequate. The author has thought best in it to encourage continual reference by the student to other works and to original sources rather than to provide a complete and sufficient source of information. The first volume, now before us, embraces a junior course in general physics, and has been especially prepared by Ernest Merritt and Frederick J. Rogers. It is the outgrowth of a system of junior instruction that has been gradually developed during a quarter of a century, and affords explicit directions, together with demonstrations and occasional elementary statements of principles. (Published by Macmillan & Co. Price, $3.)

The fifth Report of the Missouri Botanical Garden, for 1893, represents the financial condition of the trust as sound and the garden as kept in good condition. The trustees are able to carry forward a surplus of $14,649. The additions to the herbarium during the year consisted mainly of current American collections. As now arranged, the herbarium contains the Engelmann collection of 98,000 specimens of all groups; the general herbarium of higher plants, 108,000 specimens;