Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/437

Rh all authority outside their own boundaries."

"No book up to recent date," says the author of Pantheism, the Light and Hope of Modern Reason, who signs his name C. Amryc, and gives no publisher's name, "has treated pantheism as consistently as it deserves to be treated"; and he adds that "it is no creed; it is a logic; it makes absolutely no demand upon 'belief'; what is not logical is rejected, what is logical to-day is accepted, no matter whether it was unlogical a thousand years ago or will be illogical a thousand years hence; we are only responsible for our times." As pantheism, if it is a true logic, must be applicable to all races, the author has not chosen his examples from one nation or tribe; and he believes that the views he expresses are also those of nine tenths of what is called modern science. Many topics are treated of, some of which would not at first thought be associated with an exposition of pantheism. The matter and manner of the book are various. Parts of it are fairly good reading; other parts strike us as different.

A book on The Principles of Agriculture, prepared by Prof. L. H. Bailey as a text-book for schools and rural societies, is published as a number of the Rural Science Series of the Macmillan Company ($1.25). In it agriculture is treated as a business, not a science, but as a business which is aided at every point by a knowledge of science. "It is on the science side that the experimenter is able to help the farmer. On the business side the farmer must rely upon himself, for the person who is not a good business man can not be a good farmer, however much he may know of science." The principle of the intelligent application of knowledge is illustrated in a remark of the author's about the treating of drainage. The learner is apt to begin at the wrong end of his problem. In the usual method the pupil or reader is first instructed in methods of laying drains. "But drainage is not the unit. The real unit is texture and moisture of soils—plowing, draining, green cropping, are methods of producing a given or desired result. The real subject-matter for first consideration, therefore, is amelioration of soil, rather than laying of drains." Professor Bailey aims throughout this book to get at "the real subject-matter for first consideration" in matters relating to soils, the plant and crops, and the animals and stock.

Ideals and Programmes (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 75 cents) is a collection of thoughtful and suggestive essays, by Jean L. Gourdy, on the practical side of school life and the teaching of children. The author's ideal seems to be that the teacher should have a plan for her work, preparing for it so as to have the whole course marked out on general lines for the entire school year. Thus, her occupation should be to qualify herself for doing the work right. These statements of general principles are followed by essays on reading and plans for teaching, correlation as "the headstone of the corner of successful teaching, geography, sand modeling, field lessons, kindergarten training, and discipline." The burden of the whole is by skillful adaptation to get the best possible out of every lesson, in which a liberal use of field work assists greatly, and above all to avoid the stiff, formal, juiceless lessons of the old style of teaching.

There have been several biographies of Faraday, most of them now out of print; but the life, work, methods, character, and aims of the man—who was "beyond all question the greatest scientific expositor of his time"—can not be kept too constantly or too long before the minds of students. Welcome, therefore, is the easily accessible and convenient volume Michael Faraday: His Life and Work, which has been prepared by Prof. Sylvanus P. Thompson, and is published by the Macmillan Company in their Century Science Series ($1.25). The work by which Faraday contributed so much to the advancement of knowledge is made prominent, and is illustrated largely, due regard being had to the limitations of the size of the book, with citations from his own journal and copies of his drawings.

In American Indians, a book second in order but first in date of publication of a series of "Ethno-Geographic Readers" (D. C. Heath & Co., Boston), Prof. Frederick Starr has succeeded in conveying a large amount of information about our aborigines in a very small