Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/429

Rh and cream are treated in the same careful manner as the preceding topics, and one can not but wish that the volume would be in the hands of every dairyman in this country.

authors state in the preface that this work is the lineal descendant of the Manual of Inorganic Chemistry of Eliot and Storer, and a thorough revision of Eliot, Storer, and Nichols's Elementary Manual of Chemistry. These works have been so well and favorably known that it is scarcely necessary to commend the present volume for the comprehensive and intelligent manner in which the subject is presented.

The experimental and inductive methods are employed to acquaint the student with the main facts and principles of the science, and by such discipline the observing faculties are developed. As a rule, the experiments mentioned are of a simple character, and the directions are so explicit that a novice in chemistry may repeat them before a class. The work is an excellent one for the purposes intended.

is for the most part with genial humor, but now and then in sadness and indignation, that Dr. Nansen describes the life of these hardy children of the North. His knowledge of them was gained mostly in one winter, during which, he says, "I dwelt in their huts, took part in their hunting, and tried, as well as I could, to live their life and learn their language." Their daily life is presented with much fullness of detail; their appearance and dress, their houses for winter and tents for summer, their cookery and what they regard as delicacies, their woman-boats, excursions, etc., receiving due attention. A chapter is given to a careful description, with measurements, of that wonderful boat, the kaiak, and the weapons and implements that constitute its outfit, which is followed by a vivid story of a day's hunting in these boats. Some less familiar sides of Eskimo life are presented in the chapter on art, music, and poetry, and in that on the drum dances, which served both as judicial proceedings and as entertainments. Nearly a hundred pages are devoted to religious ideas, in which some curious bits of mythology and folklore are presented. Dr. Nansen represents the character of the Eskimo as gentle and patient. It is seldom that an Eskimo does anything that his own race deems wrong, crimes of violence being especially rare. Some things, however, that he does, deeming them proper, come into our category of immoralities. In his closing chapters on The Introduction of Christianity, Europeans and Natives, What have we achieved? and his Conclusion, Dr. Nansen laments the enervating influence of the civilization that Europeans have inflicted upon the Eskimos. The introduction of firearms has led them to exterminate or scare away their game. The imposition of religious commands and civil laws in a mass too great to be assimilated has driven out the old restraints and obligations and caused the victims of the process to fall between two stools. The ability to read and write has been gained at the expense of diminished skill in the kaiak, so that deaths from drowning have largely increased. A long catalogue of this sort could be gleaned from Nansen's pages, and he does not hesitate to urge that his countrymen should entirely withdraw from Greenland. The text is well illustrated with plates and small cuts.

report was designed by Prof. Irving to be the first of a series which should treat each of the important iron-producing districts adjacent to Lake Superior. For a time, in 1885 and 1886, Prof. Irving accompanied the surveying party in person, Mr. Van Hise gave the seasons of 1884, 1885, and the larger part of the following year to the work. When the survey began, the district was one which explorers had but fairly