Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/289

Rh as the barrel organ. At the forefront in bringing about this popularization of sociology has been Mr. Ward's book itself. It is now an important and largely patronized department in nearly every college and university in the country, has numerous periodicals devoted entirely to its treatment, and has even made a place for itself in the daily papers. The subject is of interest to every one, and is of such a nature that a little careful study amply repays the student both in new knowledge and as mental training. This increase of general interest in sociology has made a new edition of Mr. Ward's book necessary. As the work was given a long and appreciative review in these pages in June, 1883, we shall simply refer readers to that issue for further information.

The Student's Manual of Physics has been adapted by the author, Mr. Leroy C. Cooley, for use in the combined method of teaching by oral instruction, text-book study, and laboratory work. It contains much less material than other elementary text books for purely illustrative work, and much more of that which is necessary for systematic and successful quantitative study. Throughout the book a laboratory course accompanies the text, the experiments being described at the close of the numbered sections and set in different type. By cross references and a systematic notation attention is directed to the facts and principles that have been already studied and are involved in the study of the subject in hand. The author insists as an important feature on the pains he has taken to preserve continuity in the discussions and a smooth flow in the transitions from one subject to another, also on his attempt to impart clear-cut conceptions of physical quantities and avoid ambiguities. The explanations are clear and lucid, and the manner of the book is modern.

The Natural Elementary Geography of Mr. Jacques W. Redway represents the latest methods in the study and teaching of the science, and is composed in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee of Fifteen. The central idea of the treatment pursued in it is man, his history, customs, industries, and geographical relations; and the different countries are described according as they relate to man. In the beginning the pupil is started from home and is taken eastward to the Atlantic and then westward to the Pacific, while the characteristic features of the country he passes over and the settlements are insisted upon and made plain. He is then taken across the ocean and to other countries, and they are described nearly in the order of the closeness of their relations with us. For the United States the old arbitrary divisions based on location are subordinated to divisions according to elevation, climate, and industries. In Europe the divisions are according to racial lines. The maps are physical and political, so adjusted as to scale as to give correct ideas of the comparative areas of countries. The illustrations are all intended to instruct and are excellent.

This little work, one of a series entitled Home-Reading Books, is rather difficult to place. It is in the first place as fascinating as a fairy tale, and in the second so instructive as to be repellent to the mind of the average youth. It is an attempt to interest the child in a class of life which abounds in every pond and stream—namely, the protozoa. Each of these apparently characterless little masses of protoplasm, with far less intelligence than the average clam, assumes under the treatment of Miss Bayliss a personality almost as distinct as that of our human neighbors. In Chapter I, which is devoted to rhizopods, the leading member is the amœba, introduced as the "slowest thing on earth." The whiplashers are visited in the second chapter. Then come the ciliata, succeeded by an amusing chapter on protozoan philosophy. There are eleven chapters, the last of which, The Greatest Joke of All, might have been appropriately labeled As Others See Us, being an examination under the microscope of the human youth conducted by the