Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/287

Rh index of the trees of the eastern United States gives the common names and the botanical names according to Gray and Sargent, with the family to which each tree belongs.

This book is not a description of scenery nor an account of Alpine adventures, but an inquiry into the agencies that have made Switzerland, what it is. Its scenery, the author says, "is so greatly due to geological causes that it is impossible to discuss the present configuration of the surface without some reference to its history in bygone times. I do not, however, propose to deal with geology further than is necessary for my present purpose." He defines that purpose by remarking that during his holidays in the Alps "my attention was from the first directed to the interesting problems presented by the physical geography of the country. I longed to know what forces had raised the mountains, hollowed out the lakes, and directed the rivers. During all my holidays these questions have occupied my thoughts, and I have read much of what has been written about them." While the book, notwithstanding its somewhat clumsy construction, will be an acceptable one to every reflecting reader, it will be most welcome to one who is interested in geology. He need not be a geologist, nor much versed in that science, for the author has supplied a very good elementary geological introduction to the work, in which those geological points that have immediate application to the matter in hand are sufficiently explained. But he must want to know why such and such features are so, for that is what the book undertakes to tell. With such a mind, every student and tourist will find the book pleasant and profitable. First is given the geological introduction, with especial reference, of course, to Switzerland. Then the origin of mountains is discussed, and the general peculiarities of the mountains of Switzerland are noticed. The phenomena caused by the accumulation and action of ice and snow are considered, the former extension of glaciers, the origin and formation of valleys, the action of rivers, their directions, the character and origin of the lakes, and the influence of the strata upon scenery. Pursuing the study more in detail, attention is directed to the Jura, the central plain, the outer Alps, the central massives, the Lake of Geneva, the massive of Mont Blanc, the Valois, the Bernese Oberland, the upper Aar, Zurich and Glarus, the Rhine, the Reuss, the Ticino, and the Engadine, closing with a general summary of the geological history of Switzerland. A list of works and memoirs referred to is given in the appendix. The work is accompanied with more than one hundred and fifty suitable illustrations and an excellent map.

It is idle to speculate as to whether Herbart could have done the work in education that Locke or Pestalozzi did, but certain it is that, having the work of the older men to stand upon, he accomplished what they could not do, Herbart's service it was to unite into one system the grand isolated principles established by the pioneers of modern education. The volume before us presents Herbart's ideas as set forth in seven of his essays, two