Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/872

850 way of a review, the value of a carefully prepared bibliography of geological literature as a reference book for libraries and geological writers can not be overestimated. No. 138 is entitled Artesian Well Prospects in the Atlantic Coastal Plain Region, and is by the same author as No. 127. It seems that in this region of the Atlantic slope there are no large supplies of potable surface water. Fortunately, however, it has a geologic structure particularly favorable to the accumulation and flowage of underground waters, and from these underground streams several cities at present obtain their water supply. Mr. Darton tells us that during the past six years he has been engaged in a geological study of this coastal plain region, and has given especial attention to the question of subterranean waters; and while this investigation is as yet very imperfect, he thinks that it will in a measure meet the great demand for information as to well prospects and the general relation of the water horizons. In No. 139 Messrs. Weed and Pirsson give us a general study of the geology of the Castle Mountain mining district of Montana. No. 140 is a report of the progress made in the division of hydrography in the calendar year of 1895. The author is F. H. Newell. The Eocene Deposits of the Middle Atlantic Slope in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, A Brief Contribution to the Geology and Paleontology of Northwestern Louisiana, The Moraines of the Missouri Coteau and their Attendant Deposits, and The Potomac Formation in Virginia are the titles of the next four bulletins. No. 146, by F. B. Weeks, is a Bibliography of North American Geology, Paleontology, and Petrology and Mineralogy for 1895. No. 147 is a record, by C. D. Perrine, of the earthquakes occurring in California in 1895, of which there seem to have been about fifty. Messrs. Clarke and Hillebrand, in No. 148, publish some analyses of rocks and analytical methods used in the United States Geological Survey between the years 1880 and 1896.

In The Social Mind and Education by G. E. Vincent, an effort is made to bring conceptions from social philosophy to bear upon the problem of education, with the hope that there may result both clarification of ideas and greater definiteness of purpose. Stress h laid chiefly upon the cognitive function of society and of the individual. Such one-sidedness of treatment is adopted, not from any failure to recognize the organic unity of the mind, but because the vastness of the general subject precludes its treatment in a single volume. The parallel between the development of the race and the individual has of late been subjected to criticism. "It has been pointed out that there are short cuts by which in individual evolution whole stages of the race's growth may be omitted. . . . Education sets before itself the task of relating the individual intrinsically to the social tradition so that he may become an organic part of society. . . . It should be therefore a definite aim of the higher education to direct the student in a purposeful integration of his various pursuits, a putting back of these abstractions into a concrete conception of life."

Dr. Shufeldt has at last brought together in one volume the majority of his popular scientific papers on Natural History. Most of the material has already appeared as magazine articles, and hence does not form a systematic treatise, but is rather a series of Nature stories selected at random, and ranging from the cedar bird to the polar bear. Technical descriptions are avoided, and the text has been prepared chiefly with the view of stimulating the unscientific to an interest in the common forms of animal life which are so abundant and interesting, and which usually receive so little intelligent attention from the average country stroller. The first two chapters deal with methods of study and the classification of animals, and serve as a sort of introduction to the main portion of the book. There is also a final chapter on museums and their uses. This class of books on popular natural history has been enormously increased of late, and while even the poorest of them have some value, a new one in order to justify itself ought to have special claims to originality, and in order to be of scientific value, some system in