Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/732

712. The time for literary training being limited in such an institution, a course had to be provided that would be most helpful to students who had net time to study all the niceties of literary expression, and could, at best, master only the elementary principles of rhetoric and make themselves familiar, in a general way, with the ordinary forms of prose composition. Their work would require proficiency in description, clear and sound reasoning, and the cogent presentation of what they would want others to accept as true. Adapting his course to this condition, the author made it largely one in argumentation, with the result of a more rapid development of the student's power of reflection and greater facility and accuracy of expression. The present book follows the plan of the course thus described. While adapting his work largely to the practical questions of the day, the author has inserted model examples of argument from every source, whether new or old, affording illustrations that would illustrate. Famous passages from Webster and Burke, from Shakespeare's oratory, and from Huxley's addresses are accompanied by minute analyses of their parts, qualities, and points; and a list of more than two hundred propositions for argument or debate, and a glossary of terms, are given.

La Industria Agricola is a new agricultural paper started at Caracas, Venezuela, with Señor Guillermo Delgado Palacios as editor. Of the thirty-two pages of the first number six are devoted to the exposition of the purposes of the magazine and the bearing of science on agriculture; five to the agricultural bureaus and societies of Venezuela; ten to the agricultural staples of the country, wheat, sugar cane, and corn; two to agricultural items from the United States; and the rest to industrial novelties and miscellaneous articles.

L'Intermediaire des Biologistes (The Biologists' Intermediary) is a useful semimonthly international organ of zoölogy, botany, physiology, and psychology, published in Paris under the editorial direction of MM. Alfred Binet and Victor Henri, with numerous colaborers of equal scientific standing, which has just completed its first year. The number before us has as its leading original articles papers on the sexuality of aphides, by E. G. Balbini, and on the Colorability of Living Protoplasm, by F. Henneguy; and these are followed by two pages seeking answers from correspondents, seven pages of answers to previous questions—the notes and query feature being one of the most prominent of the publication—and classified summaries of the biological contents of periodicals. Price, 12 francs ($2.50) a year.

The Philosophy of the Humanities includes three addresses delivered on separate occasions and to different bodies by Thomas Fitzhugh, professor of Latin in the University of Texas. They discuss the evolution of classic culture and its pedagogic treatment, and inquire into the philosophic basis of the humanities. The subjects are The Evolution of Culture, The Pedagogic Aspect of Culture Evolution; Organization of the Latin Humanities in College, and Organization of the Latin Humanities in Secondary Education. The author is a sturdy advocate of the study of Latin. (University of Chicago press.)

A Bibliography and Index of North American Geology, Palæontology, and Mineralogy for 1892 and 1893, compiled by Fred Boughton Weeks, and constituting Bulletin No. 130 of the United States Geological Survey, contains 1,121 titles. The index is complete and elaborate, classified by States and main subjects, and arranged alphabetically throughout. A list of publications examined is appended.

In the comparative study of L'Évolution régressive en Biologie et en Sociologie (Regressive Evolution in Biology and Sociology), the ground is taken by the authors (MM. Jean Demoor, Jean Massart, and Émile Vandervelde) that the word evolution does not in itself imply either progression or regression, but designates all transformations, whether favorable or unfavorable, and they have applied themselves to the study of the latter kind. They have conducted the results of their several special researches in the biological and social fields so as to show how the regressive feature is manifested in both, and that every transformation involves a loss as well as a gain; that "regression is not an accident of evolution, but is the inverse of progressive evolution, the necessary complement of all transformation, organic or