Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/143

Rh the essentials of each exercise and as many modifications of it as possible. For this reason a variety of species has been used rather than a few types, since, if our experience is not at fault, this assists rather than confuses our comprehension of the subject, and above all prevents those false generalizations and conceptions that must follow a narrow study of forms. The student should collect and prepare his own material. The anatomy of the plant body, plant physiology, systematic botany, and plant morphology are treated in succession.

In his Afloat on the Ohio the Secretary of the Wisconsin State Historical Society has given us a book that may be read with pleasure and profit by every lover of American history and advancement and by persons who enjoy beautiful scenery or are fond of sketches of personal idiosyncrasies as well. The author's primary object in making the pilgrimage was historical; that appears on every page of the narrative as well as in his own avowal that his purpose was to gather "local color" for work in Western history, the Ohio River having been an important factor in the development of the West and in the making of the nation and of its greatness to a much more predominant extent than we are accustomed, in our superficial view, to realize. The party of four, voyaging in a skiff, floated down the stream by day and camped on the shore at night; and they contrived to have some shopping to do at every town so as to get more opportunities to explore. Their very starting place—Redstone, or Brownsville, at the mouth of Redstone Creek—is famous in history, beginning even with its prehistoric foundations, and is memorable for having been the first English agricultural settlement west of the Alleghanies, and for its prominence as a post in the frontier wars; and it was only the portal, as it were, to the succession of historical sites that are distributed along the whole length of the great river. The descriptions of the ever-varying scenery of the river, which are given in a few happy touches here and there, are another element of attractiveness in the narrative. At the beginning of the voyage are the manufacturing establishments, forming an almost continuous line for miles along either shore of the river; farther down it is more rural, with wide bottoms on one side, sharp bluffs and high hills on the other, alternating with one another, broad meadows, cultivated farms, and forests; towns that were prosperous in the days of steamboating, and now falling into decay, and other towns that have brought railroads to themselves and are busy and prosperous; changing below Louisville into broad reaches of meadow, with the hills receding far away; and then the bayous and swamps: truly the Ohio is a stream of many aspects. It is a surprise to learn how the more obscure parts have been left behind by the railroads, which have built up and developed the inland towns at their expense, and how primitive the rural populations still remain. In order to give a clearer idea of the history which is interwoven with the narrative, a historical outline of the settlement of the Ohio is given in the appendix; and this is followed by a bibliography. "It is time" the author says, "that our Western and Southern folk were awakened to an appreciation of the fact that they have a history at their doors quite as significant in the annals of civilization as that which induces pilgrimages to Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill."

The soil of the subconscious forms a fertile ground for the experimental labors of Dr. Sidis, and he harvests there a large crop of new ideas in regard to the laws and conditions that govern suggestibility. This state of mind is one open to suggestion, but the latter term is not given its ordinary significance of an external idea which influences the mental attitude. Neither is it confined to the technical definitions of the psychologists of Salpêtrière and Nancy who employ it mainly in their studies of the neurotic. Our author by definition and illustration furnishes a clear conception of his special use of the word. "By suggestion is meant the intrusion into the mind of an idea, met with more or less opposition by the person, accepted uncritically at last, and realized unreflectively, almost automatically."