Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/429

Rh M. Whicher (American Book Company, $1.25), is an attempt to respond to the call for variety in the Latin authors read in American preparatory schools. It aims, in introducing the student to the literature of the Romans, by presenting attractive and varied material, to arouse the desire for further acquaintance with that literature; to cultivate in him an appreciation of the beauties of language and instruction; and to help him gain, besides a mastery of the mechanism of the language, an insight into the thought and life of the people. The selections have been carefully made with reference to their difficulty, their interest as literature, and, in great part, their relation to Roman life and customs. Eutropius, Cornelius Nepos, Cæsar, Aulus Gellius, Cicero, and Livy are represented.

Roderick Hume; the Story of a New York Teacher, has been written by Mr. C. W. Bardeen to depict certain phases of the modern union school. The author says that he has no hobby to ride and no grievance to redress, but has merely described what he has seen, trusting his fancy just far enough to weave into one web characters and incidents that were real but disconnected. (Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen, 50 cents.)

A little book on Varied Occupations in Weaving has been prepared by Louisa Walker, head mistress of Fleet Road Board School, Hampstead (Infants' Department), for kindergartens. The work described in it has been systematically taught in the author's own school for the past twenty years. The ways and means employed in constructing the articles illustrated have been adapted to meet the exigencies of each case, and simplify matters for little workers. The illustrations are from actual work produced in the school. The entire weaving was done by infants of from five to seven years of age, and the material was afterward manipulated into useful articles by the teachers. (Published by Macmillan & Co., $1.)

The National Geographic Society has arranged for a series of geographical monographs on the physical features of the earth's surface, to be published monthly during the school year, at 20 cents each, or $1.50 for the ten. The first two of these monographs are by Major J. W. Powell. The first describes Physiographic Processes, treating the atmosphere, waters, and rock formations as envelopes of the earth continually in motion and pointing out the processes by which, through the action of the forces generated, the principal features of the earth's surface are produced. The second is on the Physiographic Features of the earth, and is an attempt to characterize these mainly as they are dependent on the three great physiographic processes, and to show how fire, earthquake, and flood have been involved in fashioning the land and the sea.

The Annales de la Oficine Meteorologica Argentina (Argentine Weather Office), of which Walter G. Davis is director, at Rosario, South America, embodies the results of observations made three times a day at thirty regular stations, and voluntary rain observations made by station agents at sixty-nine stations on the four principal railroads of the republic. The observations, recorded in tabular form, fill a large volume.

The Geological Atlas of the United States, now being published in parts called folios, consists of topographical and geological maps. The complete atlas will consist of several thousand folios, each of which contains a topographical and a geological map of a small section of country, and will be named after some well-known town or natural feature within the limits of the district named. The topographical maps will show the reliefs, drainage, and cultures of the districts, indicated by the usual or definite conventional marks. The geological maps will show on distinct sheets the areal geology, or the areas occupied by the various rocks of the district; the economical geology, or the distribution of useful minerals; the occurrence of artesian water, and other facts of economical interest, showing their relations to the features of topography and to geological formations; the sheet of structure sections will exhibit the relations existing beneath the surface among the formations the distribution of which on the surface is represented in the map of areal geology; and the sheet of columnar sections will contain a concise description of the rock formations which constitute the local record of geological history. To each of these maps is attached a legend fully explaining all the conventional signs, marks, and colors used in it; and each folio contains a descriptive