Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/145

Rh of fish and fish eggs, spawning seasons, the character of fresh eggs, and periods of incubation are also treated.

Lieutenant Butts's Manual of Physical Drill is a useful book generally, and not in the army alone. Its object is to systematize physical training in the army and to furnish a practical guide that will enable any officer to give regular and beneficial instruction to his command. Illustration is largely used, as being the simplest mode of description. The exercises are supposed to be controlled by music, of which two schedules are furnished, and are arranged in sets of five each—adapted to other music in many of the drills—and are made to follow one another so closely as to compel the attention of the men and demand concentration of mind upon the work in hand. The work is introduced with brief remarks on the method of instruction, dress, hygiene, bathing, general rules, etc., and includes rifle drill, bar and dumb-bell drill, calisthenics, Indian clubs, running, wall scaling, work with the various articles of gymnastic apparatus, athletic games and contests, and related exercises. The directions are very brief, but plain and explicit. The value of the work depends largely upon the illustrations, a considerable proportion of which are from the life, by instantaneous photography.

Mr. Teall recognizes in the beginning of his lessons on Punctuation the difficulties in the art, and the failure of authors to agree upon a reasonable and consistent system. It is, in fact, a matter into which the personal equation enters to a much larger extent than is generally suspected. Each writer has his own moods, his own shades of meaning, and his own emphases to express, of which he alone is conscious, but which he wishes to convey to others; and for this, punctuation is his resource. Hence a punctuation proper for one author might not be suitable to another, even though he may have seemingly the same thoughts, the same words, and the same construction of sentences. There can, therefore, be no hard and-fast rules for the details of punctuation. The effort in Mr. Teall's treatise has been to reduce the number of actual rules to the fewest possible. Principles have been considered as much as possible, and the rules given are, with the exception of a few that it seemed impossible to reduce to that basis, really concise statements of principle. Much detail that other authors have subjected to special rules thus becomes here mere exemplification under general rules.

We have received No. 4 of the second part of Vol. II of the Bulletin of the Geological Institution of the University of Upsala, Sweden, edited by Hj Sjöznen. It contains articles in German on the Cambrian and Silurian phosphorus bearing rocks of Sweden, by John Gunner Anderssen; Graptolites, by Carl Wiman; Peat Bog Investigations, by Rutger Servander and Knut Kjellmark—all accompanied by fine illustrative plates; and in English, Notes on the Structure and Development of the Turfmorr Stormur in Gestrikland, by Gustaf Helsing, and Proceedings of the Geological Section of the Association of Natural Science at the University of Upsala.

The Transactions of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the American Microscopical Society, held at Pittsburg in August, 1896, form a volume of upward of 400 pages, and comprise various papers on Histology, Photomicography, Astronomical Photography, the Rotifers of Sandusky Bay, Water Supply, the Bacteriology of Diphtheria, and kindred subjects, chiefly in biology; together with methods of teaching microscopical science. Numerous full-page plate illustrations are given.

The second part of the voluminous report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1895-'96 contains elaborate summaries of the usual character concerning various educational matters at home and abroad. The first article is on education in Sweden and Iceland. It is followed by brief accounts of upward of fifty institutions characterized as "typical," that offer manual or industrial training. Dr. Gabriel Comparyé's criticism of higher and secondary education in the United States is reproduced from his report as delegate to the Chicago