Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/791

Rh to supply to advanced classes specimens of the less familiar German authors which have been accessible only in expensive volumes. Among the authors already or soon to be represented are Cholevius, Gervinus, Bürger, Kurz, Goethe, and Khull. The selections are printed in Roman type.

A system of abbreviations has been published by its inventor, Rev. D. A. Quinn, under the title Stenotypy (the author, 125 Governor Street, Providence; paper, $1 cloth, $1.50). It is designed as a substitute for shorthand, to be used on the typewriter, but there is nothing to prevent its being written with the pen or printed from type. The inventor claims that a hundred and twenty words a minute can be written in this system by an ordinary and three hundred words a minute by an expert typewriter operator, and that only a few hours are needed for learning it in place of the many weeks or months required for learning shorthand. He recommends it especially for use with the telegraph and for persons who read addresses from manuscript, as well as for all mercantile and newspaper work. The first line of Hamlet's soliloquy appears as follows in stenotypy: 2 B R nt 2 B T Z' qst 6.

The List of Books for Girls and Women prepared by Augusta H. Leypoldt and George Lies (Library Bureau; cloth, $1; paper, 50 cents) brings helpfully together inquirers and authorities in the literature of art, science, and recreation. Its twenty-one hundred works have been chosen by specialists of mark, who add descriptive and critical notes of refreshing independence. Although the list is designed for girls and women, nine tenths of its titles and fully half its hints for clubs would serve boys and men very gainfully. The editors state that this list will probably be followed by others more detailed, the aim being to pass brief, competent judgments on the whole working literature of our time.

The Sexuality of Nature, by L. H. Grindon (Boston, Mass.: New-Church Union, 75 cents), attempts to prove that "Nature is a system of nuptials. Everything in creation partakes either of masculine or feminine qualities. Animals and plants, earth, air, water, color, heat, light, music, thought, speech, the sense of the beautiful, the adaptation of the soul for heaven—all exist as the offspring or products of a kind of marriage." Under the consideration of inorganic substances we find: "And again, by the marriage of oxygen and nitrogen, two gases invisible and innocuous, nitric acid, a yellow, ferocious liquid, is produced." The book is a novel one, and may interest the psychologist. Its science, however, seems rather uncertain, as the formation of a "ferocious liquid," nitric acid, by the "marriage" of oxygen and nitrogen, is something that has not as yet been successfully accomplished in the laboratory.

Pan-Gnosticism, by Noel Winter (Transatlantic Publishing Co.), is described on its title-page as "the outlines for a methodized course of thought, in which is submitted a proposition transfiguring the present ultimate conclusions of philosophy: and to the effect that inscrutability is a delusion; or, in other words, that the conditions necessary to absolute mystery involve an absurdity."

A volume of short passages in prose and verse—from two to five to a page—all relating to Patriotic Citizenship, has been prepared by Thomas J. Morgan (American Book Co., $1). The matter is carefully arranged on a plan intended to stimulate an intelligent patriotism. A large number of authors and speakers, mostly American, has been drawn upon, ranging in time from Edmund Burke and Patrick Henry to persons now prominent in literature and affairs. An appropriate illustration stands at the head of each chapter.

A collection of Readings and Recitations for Jewish Homes and Schools, made by Isabel E. Cohen, has been issued by The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia. The selections are mostly poems dealing with episodes in Hebrew history and legend, and are drawn from the works of the best English and American writers. Among the names oftenest appearing are Byron, Disraeli, Emma Lazarus, Longfellow, Charles Reade, and Whittier.

Results of Primary Triangulation, by H. Gannett, is the title of Bulletin No. 122 of the United States Geological Survey. The triangulation of the survey is executed solely for the primary control of topographic work upon scales not exceeding 1: 62,500, The