Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/578

564, and other pictures that deserve to be well spoken of. (83 and 85 Duane Street, New York; price, $10 a year.)

The microbe has, during the past few years, assumed so prominent a place, both in dietetics and therapeutics, that nowadays a medical school of any standing must include in its curriculum, some sort of a course in bacteriology. The book before us, A Course of Elementary Practical Bacteriology, by A. A. Kanthack, M. D., and J. H. Drysdale, M. B., has grown out of the teacher's and student's needs at the St. Bartholomew Hospital in London, and is designed simply as a laboratory handbook. It is arranged in three parts. Parts I and II, Elementary Bacteriology and Bacteriological Analysis, encompass three months' work. The third part consists of an introduction to bacteriological chemistry. (Macmillan, $1.10.)

A Report on the Geology of the Coastal Plain of Alabama has been issued by the Survey of that State. The coastal plain includes all but the northeastern two fifths of the State. It is an agricultural region, and contains only such useful minerals as fertilizers and building materials. It is interesting scientifically from the remarkably complete series of Eocene and Cretaceous strata exposed in its river banks.

The piece of special pleading for Greek in which John Kennedy essays to answer the question Must Greek go? is likely to be ineffective because of its extravagance (Bardeen, 50 cents). The author claims for Greek the excellence of Shakespeare, Burns, and Keats, to whom Greek culture was accessible only at second hand, also the "Spirit of '76" and the beauty of the Columbian Exposition, allowing no credit to our inheritance from our Germanic ancestors. His claims are tricked out in a multitude of jingling phrases, many of which are too hackneyed for the columns of a one-cent newspaper.

A manual of technical directions for the grinding, finishing, setting, testing, and computing of lenses, prepared by Henry Orford, has been issued under the title Lens Work for Amateurs (Macmillan, 80 cents). The directions are full and explicit, and are supplemented by two hundred and thirty-one cuts. The author disclaims any attempt to give an easy method for the manufacture of lenses, but he has aimed to furnish a serviceable guide to both young workmen and amateurs.

The Psychological Review has undertaken a series of Monograph Supplements, in which may be published longer dissertations than can be admitted to the Review. The first issued is On Sensations from Pressure and Impact, by Harold Griffing. The results obtained from the investigations herein described relate to discrimination between different intensities and durations of stimuli, between the same stimuli applied to different areas and different parts of the body, the difference in the discriminative powers of different individuals, etc.

In an article on Evolution and Christianity, reprinted from the Wooster Quarterly, Prof. Horace N. Mateer gives a popular statement of what evolution is, assenting to its validity, but affirming also the truth of all the important doctrines in the Bible. He says that the position of the Bible is strengthened by placing it upon a scientific foundation.

Four essays by as many writers, reprinted from The Engineering Magazine, have been issued as a pamphlet with the title Architectural Education for America. In the first of these Arthur Rotch tells what is the influence of the École des Beaux-Arts; Robert D. Andrews describes a practical training; the English method is set forth by R. W. Gibson; and Barr Ferree closes with An Outsider's View. The object of the pamphlet is to bring together the chief points of merit in the systems most familiar to the American architect, so as to throw some light on the question, How shall the American architect be trained professionally to reach the best results for architecture in his own country?

The first of the 1895 series of Ethical. Addresses is What we mean by Duty, by W. L. Sheldon (S. Burns Weston, Philadelphia, yearly, $1; single number, 12 cents). After pointing out that popular conceptions of duty regard it as something stern and forbidding, the author shows that it should rather be regarded as the conformity of conduct to natural order.

In a pamphlet published by the Theosophical Society, Tacoma, Wash., Fred G. Plummer attempts to prove a Change of the Earth's Axis. His argument is clearly put