Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/731

Rh in which he strongly urges that in studying an organism or its tissues the investigator to gain certain knowledge must know the age, health, state of nervous, muscular, and digestive activity; in fact, all that it is possible to find out about the processes of life that are going on and have gone on when the study is made.

The Thirteenth Annual Report of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station contains, as do all these publications, the results of much valuable experimental work. Among the papers of especial interest in the present volume may be mentioned the following: The Individuality of the Cow as influencing Offspring; The Relation of Sex in Thoroughbred Calves; Proximate Constituents of the Dry Matter of Food; The Relation of Fat in Food to Fat in Milk, and Twin Calves; Alfalfa Forage for Milch Cows; and A Detailed Comparison of the Different Breeds of Dairy Cows with reference to the Production of Cream and Butter.

The second number in the Section of History and Economics of the Leland Stanford Junior publications consists of a monograph on the Official Relations between the United States and the Sioux Indians, by Lucy E. Textor. The author begins her history with the formation of the republic, and traces in detail the various forms of legislation and "agencies" by which we have attempted to regulate and protect the Indians. The work seems carefully done, and, as the editor says, each special investigation of this sort is important as an advance toward that "general ideal history of the United States "which we still lack.

School Interests and Duties, developed from Page's Mutual Duties of Parents and Teachers, from various Public Reports and Documents, and from the Bulletins of the National Bureau of Education, by Robert M. King (American Book Company, $1), is connected with Mr. Page's address by the address having been a powerful agent in the advancement of the schools to their present position, and having partly laid the foundations of that advance. In the meantime new factors have come into prominence in school affairs—chiefly the institution of school boards, directors, trustees, etc., to take the place of citizens at large in the direct management of the schools; and further, the vast extension of the subjects to be dealt with. This book has been prepared with a view to bringing down to date the doctrine of cooperation in school interests, "with all that it implies of enlightened, harmonious, and effective work in the interests of popular education," and the thoughts of numerous recent writers are quoted in connection with the discussion. It deals with such subjects as the duties of parents, of teachers, and of school officers, school architecture, hygiene, libraries, morals, etiquette, celebrations and observances, the use of the dictionary, the teachers' institute, reading circles, and the teacher's relation to public opinion. In conclusion, a series of outlines of reading-circle work is given.

The advantages of vertical penmanship have been so widely recognized that every publisher of writing-books now has to have a vertical series. A vertical style of the well-known Spencerian penmanship has been prepared, and in the Shorter Course this style is presented in seven small square books. Directions with cuts showing positions are given on the inside pages of the cover. (American Book Company, 6 cents each.)

The distinguishing features of a new elementary text-book on Algebra, by Lyman Hall, are stated in the preface as, first, preserving the familiar methods of arithmetic as far as possible in the first chapters, in order to convince the student that algebra is merely an extension of the mathematical knowledge he already possesses; second, review examples and questions throughout the book which will help him to master following chapters and prepare him to pass from this to a higher treatise without a formal review. (American Book Company, $1.)

In his recent text-book on American Literature, Prof. Brander Matthews makes fifteen authors of the United States stand out prominently by giving each a chapter and providing them a background of colonial and other writers whose works are of less general interest. Portraits of most of the authors mentioned are given, together with pictures of the birthplace, and sometimes of the later residence, of the more prominent, and facsimiles of their manuscript. Each