Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/285

Rh. The volume is illustrated with nearly three hundred figures and a considerable number of plates.

An address on The Railroad as an Element in Education, delivered at the World's Fair in New Orleans in 1885, by Prof. Alexander Hogg, was widely circulated at the time, attracted much attention, and was noticed in the Monthly. It was an honest and forcible attempt to present the benefits the railroads have conferred upon society and the nation, and to antagonize the unreasoning populistic prejudice against them. It showed in a few words appealing directly to public intelligence that railroads have cheapened communication and transportation, have opened remote parts of the country, making them near and accessible, have removed the dangers of local famine, have contributed vastly to the national defense while removing the necessity of keeping large standing armies; and that in view of the services they render and of what is charged for like work abroad, their rates are extremely low. Further, the men who have acquired the most wealth through railroad management have also distinguished themselves by their benefactions to education and other contributions to public welfare. This address is now republished in a revised and enlarged form, with additional chapters reviewing the development of the ten years subsequent to its original publication. Of these chapters one of the most important is the one on The Inception and History of Strikes, the methods of which are shown to be "wrong in principle and ruinous in practice."

The first volume of Prof. W.J. Beal's Grasses of North America was published ten years ago, and was noticed by us in November, 1887. It was designed more particularly for farmers and students, and comprised chapters on the physiology, composition, selection, improving, and cultivation of grasses and clovers. The present volume supplements the former one to a certain extent, but in most respects it is an independent work. In it the grasses are classified and described, and each species is illustrated; and chapters are added on their geographical distribution, and also a bibliography. In most cases the generic characters closely follow those given by Bentham and Hooker in Genera Plantarum. Extracts are given regarding the writings of prominent authorities on the grasses; and also notes regarding the tribes and some of the genera. The author has been permitted to examine, during his studies for this work, the herbarium of Michigan Agricultural College, all the grasses in the herbaria of the University of Michigan and Harvard University (including the grasses of the late Dr. George Thurber), those of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, and those of Prof. F. L. Scribner; and, himself one of our leading botanists, has been assisted by Prof. L. H. Bailey and Prof. S. M. Tracy in the matter of geographical distribution, L. H. Dewey and A. A. Crozier. The work is a real addition to our botanical literature, filling as it does a department that has not before been completely occupied.

Mr. Thomas D. Hawley, of the Chicago bar, has prepared and published a new system of logic, by which, he claims, reasoning can be carried on by an infallible process, even as the interest can be calculated upon a promissory note. The method consists in the repeated use of a few processes which are performed in a mechanical manner, and the results appear automatically. "Its tools are a few simple signs—namely, the capital letters of the alphabet to represent positive terms, the small letters to represent negative terms; the mathematical sign of equality, ≈ for ‘is’; a short prependicular mark, / for ‘or,’ and a square for the ‘universe of discourse.’ When a square is divided into a proper number of sections it is called a Reasoning Frame. By the use of the Reasoning Frame every proposition which can possibly be made with the letters used is set before us. We then eliminate every proposition which is