Part 16

_Geographical Nature Studies_ (American Book Company) is intended by the author, _Frank Owen Payne_, to assist the teacher, and by pointing out the relations, often unrecognized, between familiar phenomena and home geography to guide the study of the class to definite and practical ends. The lessons are intended to fit the comprehension of the youngest pupils, to promote the cultivation of habits of accurate observation, and to stimulate a desire for more knowledge and broader views of the world. They lead directly up to the point where the more formal study of geography from a text-book begins. The lessons may be used as reading exercises and for topical recitations, and exercises are introduced which may assist the cultivation of the power of correct verbal expression in the statement of facts. The exercises concern weather, animals, physical phenomena, and objects about us, and are very various.

Impressions of Medusæ have been observed on the Jurassic lithographic limestones of Solenhofen, and some "problematic fossils" on the Lower Cambrian rocks of Sweden have been regarded as derived from Medusæ. Certain nodules, bearing what looked like flattened-out starfishes--"star-cobbles" they were called--have been found among the fossils of the Coosa Valley, Alabama. Director _Charles D. Walcott_, of the United States Geological Survey, concluded that these also represented Medusæ, and began an investigation of them which involved a comparison with the Swedish and Bavarian specimens, and was at last enlarged so as to embrace all fossil Medusæ. His work is now published as a separate memoir, _Fossil Medusæ_, as one of the Monographs of the United States Geological Survey (Vol. XXX). The Middle Cambrian Medusæ are first described, and then, in order, the Lower Cambrian of the United States and of Sweden and Bohemia and the Jurassic of Bavaria. The text is illustrated by forty-seven excellent plates.

A new edition, revised and with additions, of the _Mechanics_ and _Heat_ of _Edward L. Nichols_ and _W. S. Francis_ is published by the Macmillan Company ($1.50). The book is the first volume of the Elements of Physics of the authors, which is complete in three volumes. We find in it no explanation of the nature and extent of the revisions and additions.

The publication of such a book as _Catering for Two_--Comfort and Economy for small Households (G. P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25)--has been suggested to _Alice L. James_ by the difficulty of reducing the average rules of the cook-book to meet the wants of a family of two or three. The work embodies the results of sixteen years' experience in labor and study, and the author hopes that with it the way may be made easier for others whose bills of fare may be made for two. The directions are claimed to be throughout exact and reliable, and the dishes to be nourishing, appetizing, and inexpensive. The author's plan is to take a bill of fare with a comfortable variety of dishes, and direct explicitly how each is to be prepared.

The manual on _Testing Milk and its Products_, prepared for dairy students, creamery and cheese factory operators, food chemists, and dairy farmers, by _E. H. Farrington_ and _F. W. Noll_, has reached a fourth edition, the first three editions having been exhausted in about a year. The present edition has been thoroughly revised, and such additions have been made to it as have been necessary to bring it up to date. It has been adopted as a text-book or reference-book in the dairy schools of twelve States of the Union and in a number of schools in Canada. (Published by the Mendota Book Company, Madison, Wis. $1.)

_The Silver Cross, or the Carpenter of Nazareth_ (International Publishing Company, New York), is a short story selected and translated from The Mysteries of the People of Eugène Sue, and published for the sake of the illustrations it is supposed to afford of the tyranny of the ruling class and the oppression of the working people and the poor and their suffering thereby which prevailed in the grand days of the Roman Empire, as well as always before, and is assumed to have continued down to the present. It is the story of the life and sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth, told in the thrilling style of the great French novelist.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Delaware College; No. 44. Sorghum in 1898. By Charles L. Penny. Pp. 16.--Michigan State Agricultural College. Special, No. 11. Frozen Trees and their Treatment. Pp. 4; Nos. 166 and 167. Dairy Matters. By C. D. Smith and G. H. True. Pp. 30; No. 168. Michigan Fruit List. By L. H. Taft. Pp. 16; Michigan Bulletin of Vital Statistics, February and March, 1899. Pp. 20 each.--New Hampshire College: No. 58. The Cost of raising Calves. By Fred W. Morse. Pp. 12; No. 59. Tenth Annual Report. By Charles S. Murkland. Pp. 56; No. 60. Green Corn under Glass. By F. William Rane. Pp. 60; No. 61. The Inspection of Fertilizers in 1898. Pp. 12; No. 62. Forcing Pole Beans under Glass. By F. William Rane. Pp. 8.--New Jersey: Report of the Botanical Department for 1898. By Byron D. Halsted. Pp. 84; No. 135. The Poisonous Plants of New Jersey. By Byron D. Halsted. Pp. 28.--New York: No. 150. Two Small Fruit Pests. By F. H. Hall and V. H. Lowe. Pp. 5.--Ohio: No. 99. Sugar Beet Investigations in 1898. By A. D. Selby; United States Department of Agriculture. Some Insects Injurious to Garden and Orchard Crops. By F. H. Chittenden. Pp. 99; North Dakota Weather and Crop Service for December, 1898. By W. L. Moon and B. H. Bronson. Pp. 8.

American Economic Association. The Federal Census. Critical Essays by Members of the Association. Pp. 516. Paper. $1.

American Public Health Association. The Bertillon Classification of Causes of Death. Lansing, Mich. Pp. 40.

Badenoch, L. N. True Tales of the Insects. London: Chapman & Hall. Pp. 255.

Barber, Edwin Atlee. Anglo-American Pottery. (Old English China, with American Views.) Indianapolis, Ind.: Press of the Clay-worker. Pp. 170. $1.50.

Bauer, L. A. The Physical Decomposition of the Earth's Magnetic Field, No. 1. Pp. 20. Is the Principal Source of the Secular Variation of the Earth's Magnetism within or without the Earth's Crust? Pp. 6.

Bridges and Framed Structures. An Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Vol. I, No. 1. April, 1899. Chicago: The D. P. Rauck Publishing Company. Pp. 92. 30 cents.

Campbell, W. W. The Elements of Practical Astronomy. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 264. $2.

Fairchild, H. L. Glacial Waters in the Finger-Lake Region of New York. Pp. 36. Glacial Lakes, Newberry, Warren, and Dana, in Central New York. Pp. 14.

Fiske, John. Through Nature to God. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 194. $1.

Greinger, S., M. D. A Case of Abnormally High Temperature subsequent to Attack of Tertian Ague. Pp. 5.

Hague, Arnold. Presidential Address to the Geological Society of Washington, 1898. Abstracts of Minutes, etc. Pp. 48.

Hollick, Arthur. Notes on Block Island. Pp. 20, with plates. The Relations between Forestry and Geology in New Jersey. Parts I and II. Pp. 24. Additions to the Palæobotany of the Cretaceous Formation on Staten Island. No. II. Pp. 12, with plates.

Hunter, S. J. Alfalfa, Grasshoppers, Bees: Their Relationship. University of Kansas. Pp. 152.

Jackman, Wilbur S. Nature Study for Grammar Grades. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 407. $1.

Jenks, Josephine, Translator. Friedrich Froebel's Education by Development. New York: D. Appleton and Company. International Education Series. Pp. 347.

Kemp, James Furman. Preliminary Report of the Geology of Essex County, New York. Pp. 24. Geology of the Lake Placid Region. Pp. 20, with map.

Marot, Helen. A Handbook of Labor Literature. Philadelphia: Free Library of Economics and Political Science. Pp. 96. $1.

Mason, Otis Tufton. Aboriginal American Zoötechny. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 37.

New England Anti-Vivisection Society Monthly. Vol. IV, No. 4. April, 1899. Pp. 20. Boston. 10 cents. $1 a year.

Pennwitt, W. C. Memorial to the United States Senate concerning a National University. Pp. 16.

Peck, F. W., Commissioner General. The United States at the Paris Exposition in 1900. Pp. 11. Internationale Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900. Regulations, Classification. Chicago. Pp. 110.

Roosa, D. B. St. John, M. D. Defective Eyesight. The Principle of its Relief by Glasses. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 193. $1.

Russell, Frank. Explorations in the Far North. University of Iowa. Pp. 190.

Sargent, Frederick Leroy. Corn Plants. Their Uses and Ways of Life. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 106.

Smith, D. T., M. D. The Philosophy of Money, and other Essays. Louisville, Ky.: John P. Morton & Co. Pp. 203. $1.25.

Smith, Edgar F. (authorized translator). Victor von Richter's Organic Chemistry, or Chemistry of the Carbon Compounds. Edited by Prof. R. Anschütz. Third American from the eighth German edition. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston & Co. Vol. I. The Aliphatic Series. Pp. 625. $3.

Smithsonian Institution (U. S. National Museum). Cook, O. F. The Diplopod Family Striariidæ. Pp. 8, with plates. African Diplopoda of the Family Gomphodesmidæ. Pp. 64, with plates.

Swift, Morrison I. Anti-Imperialism. Los Angeles, Cal.: Public Ownership Review. Pp. 64.

United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. Report to June 30, 1898. Washington. Pp. 350.

Woodman, J. Edmund. Studies in the Gold-bearing Slates of Nova Scotia. Boston Society of Natural History. Pp. 42, with 3 plates.

Fragments of Science.

=The New Zealand Experiment in Woman Suffrage.=--The right of suffrage was given to all the women of New Zealand in 1893 without any concerted action or aggressive demonstrations on their part by the free, almost unsolicited, vote of the men. The general election took place in November of the same year, and is described in the Saturday Review as having been a warm contest, with several questions on which public opinion was sharply divided; but "on the whole, the women took matters wonderfully coolly. They flocked in thousands to the public meetings, where, by common consent, the front seats were given up to them." Contrary to expectation, they displayed little emotion, and even had to be "coached" to make a pretense of enthusiasm. "Polling day was awaited with dread by the electioneering agents and returning officers, with doubt by veteran politicians, and with pleasurable excitement by the women." They all voted, and "what did it all lead to?" "It left things very much as they were.... Gradually but irresistibly the conviction forced itself upon the New Zealand mind that the women knowing little and caring as little about political details, had voted almost always with the men of their family and class. Sharing to the full the prejudices, hopes, and interests of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers, they had cheerfully doubled the voting power of these. Where, as in the case of schoolmistresses and factory girls, they had some special bond of union other than domestic they had voted very much as schoolmasters and male trade-unionists had voted.... With one accord colonists ceased to be afraid of what the suffrage might do, and began instead to complain of it for not doing more. Only here and there careful observers note that groups of women are studying politics, and foresee that, as years go by, these will supply a new and intelligent force with distinct and logically reasoned aims of its own."

=The Metric System= (a Letter to the London Times).--SIR: I see that on Wednesday next, the 22d inst., the President of the Board of Trade is to receive a deputation from the Decimal Associations and others to urge on the Government, not merely the adoption of the decimal system of notation, but the compulsory application within two years of the metric system of weights and measures in its entirety. I have been hoping to see a letter in the Times from some person of importance calling attention to this deputation. I fervently trusted I should notice one from your correspondent, Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, a year or so back, contributed a series of thoroughly well-thought-out and logical articles, exposing the fallacy of the metric system; but if any such letter has appeared I have, unfortunately, missed it. I believe this agitation to be largely due to scientific professors who have been brought up on foreign books, and have found it too much trouble to convert foreign measurements into English; further, due to the promptings of a number of foreign merchants, forming (happily, or unhappily) now so large a portion of our traders-men who, also, do not wish to take the trouble of converting foreign weights and measures into English. As regards the suggestion, made time after time, that the metric system is one giving the greatest simplicity to calculations, I say unhesitatingly, from very considerable experience, that it is one absolutely subversive of mental arithmetic, and I appeal to anybody who has ever had the misfortune to wait at the _guichet_ of a French railway station while the clerk inside has been calculating the total amount to be paid for two first-class and one second-class from "A" to "B" with a piece of chalk, or pencil and paper, to compare the speed and the certainty of this process with the answer that he would get at Euston, or at any such station in Great Britain, and say which system shows by results the advantages in point of time and in accuracy. The French themselves, as has been pointed out on more than one occasion, find the metric system too irksome, and they evade it. According to the metric system, one of its great merits is that you can state every required quantity by multiples or submultiples of ten--metre, 1; decimetre, 0.1; centimetre, 0.01; millimetre, 0.001. But no Frenchman thinks of expressing himself in this way. Instead of 0.01, he says cm. 1. For a millimetre, he says mm. 1. When he comes to large weights, does he not commonly abjure the 1,000 kilos and write one tonne? When he comes to domestic weights the kilogramme is found too large; the half of this, the practical equivalent of the pound, is wanted. He ought to write 500 grammes. He does not. He abjures his decimals, and writes one half kilo. But I feel I must not take up your space by multiplying instances, so well known to many who have studied the subject, of the unbearable burden of the decimal _plus_ metrical system compulsorily carried out. I well know the value of decimals, and the indispensable need of their use in many circumstances; but I object to being compelled to use them when they are not needed and are in the way. I find it easier to state seven eighths, and to deal with it mentally, than to put it into the form of .875. I do not wish to be restricted by law in the use of my tools. What would be thought of the law which compelled a shipwright on all occasions to use a chisel, and never to employ the adze. I, with, I believe, every upholder of English weights and measures, and of the use of fractions, am quite willing that the metric system should be made legal in its entirety throughout Great Britain; but we are not willing that the useful weights and measures which we can employ with so great facility and accuracy should be made illegal. Let the two exist together, and experience will prove which is the one preferred by the community. I am, sir, your obedient servant,

FREDERICK BRAMWELL. 5 GREAT GEORGE STREET, WESTMINSTER, S. W., _March 18, 1899_.

P. S.--Very probably the old stalking-horses will be trotted out on Wednesday, and the President of the Board of Trade will be told of the confusion created by the existence of mere local weights and measures. I believe that if those who cite these anomalies were asked to give instances at various dates it would be found that these local weights and measures were dying out. In any event they are illegal, and are not obligatory upon anybody. Every man can claim to deal according to the standards of length, of weights, and of capacity. Most certainly the introduction of the metric system would largely add to the use of illegal weights and measures, not only locally, but generally. If the inquiry were made in France, even no farther off than Boulogne, it would be found that, in the markets there, dealings are frequently carried out on a local system unconnected with the metric.--F. B.

=Variations in African Religious Ideas.=--Miss Kingsley observes, in her West African Studies, that when you are traveling from district to district you can not fail to be struck by the difference in character of the native religions you are studying, and that no wandering student of the subject in western Africa can avoid recognizing the existence of at least four distinct forms of development of the fetich idea. They have every one of them the same underlying idea, and yet they differ. "And I believe," Miss Kingsley says, "much of the confusion which is supposed to exist in African religious ideas is a confusion only existing in the minds of cabinet ethnologists from a want of recognition of the fact of the existence of these schools. For example, suppose you take a few facts from Ellis and a few from Bastian and mix, and call the mixture West African religion. You do much the same sort of thing as if you took bits from Mr. Spurgeon's works and from those of some eminent Jesuit and of a sound Greek churchman and mixed them, and labeled it European religion. The bits would be all right by themselves, but the mixture would be a quaint affair." Of the four main schools of fetich predicated by Miss Kingsley, the Tshi and Ewe school (Ellis's school) is mainly concerned with the preservation of life; the Calabar school with attempting to enable the soul successfully to pass through death; the Mpongwe school with the attainment of material prosperity; and the school of Nkissi with the worship of the mystery of the power of evil.

=A Natural History Society as a School.=--Among the agencies employed by the Boston Society of Natural History for making itself a vehicle of instruction to the public has been the employment of an educated man and teacher as guide to the museum, who should also give lectures there. The salary of this officer has heretofore been provided by the bounty of Miss Harriet E. Freeman, but she has been obliged to discontinue her contribution, and the curator is now seeking other means of maintaining a suitably qualified assistant. The "guide," Mr. A. W. Grabau, delivered a course of lectures in April and May, 1897, on "The Surface of the Earth: Its Rocks, Soil, and Scenery," in which special attention was given to the scenery in New England; and, whenever it was practicable, excursions were made to localities which could be used as illustrations. A similar course, delivered in 1896, resulted in the formation during the summer of the same year of a class of thirty persons, summer residents of Kennebunkport, Maine, who were under Mr. Grabau's daily instruction for two weeks. The awakening of interest in local scenery further led to his giving lectures in Belmont and Arlington, and he thereby became instrumental in a movement intended to preserve the local frontal bowlder moraine on Arlington Heights--a valuable geological movement. A course of lectures on the Animals of the Shores of New England was given by Mr. Grabau to a class of from forty to seventy-five persons, in the Teachers' School of Science, with excursions on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. In a similar fall course attention was given specially to the study of animals in their various habitats. A course by Mr. Grabau on the use of the microscope and the preparation of specimens was followed by ten days' laboratory work in Limekilns Bay, Maine. One of the results of a winter course on zoölogy, to a class of twenty teachers, was the formation of the Hale House Natural History Club, in connection with which field meetings are held, classes for children are formed, and papers upon elementary subjects are read and discussed. Other courses of lectures are mentioned in the report of the curator of the society--the field lessons in geology, by Professor Barton, with a winter course in historical geology; the course of Dr. R. W. Greenleaf, on the elementary structure and function of the parts of flowering plants; the course of the curator (Alpheus Hyatt), on elementary zoölogy; and the lectures on geography, by Prof. W. M. Davis.

=Glacier Water.=--An analysis of two samples of water from the Illecilliwaet Glacier, in British Columbia, was recently made by F. T. Shutt and A. T. Charron. The water was collected a few feet from the glacier's irregular face, about a mile and a half from the glacier station on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The following is abstracted from an account in the Chemical News:

+-----------+----------- | No. 1. | No. 2. +-----------+----------- | Parts per million. ----------------------------------+-----------+----------- Free ammonia | 0.018 | 0.018 Albuminoid ammonia | 0.027 | 0.037 Nitrogen as nitrates and nitrites | 0.0246 | 0.0442 Oxygen absorbed in fifteen minutes| 0.0396 | 0.0672 Oxygen absorbed in four hours | 0.1056 | 0.1744 Chlorine | 0.10 | 0.10 Total solids at 105° C. | 30.8 | 12.0 Solids after ignition | 30.8 | 8.0 Loss on ignition | None. | 4.0 Phosphates | None. | None. ----------------------------------+-----------+-----------

The authors go on to say: "From the above data we may unhesitatingly conclude that the glacier water is one of great organic purity. The samples are not identical, due no doubt to the fact that they were collected twelve days apart, and probably from different parts of the foot of the glacier. Both analyses, however, show that, judged by the standards used in the diagnosis of ordinary potable waters, it is a water possessing a high degree of purity, and one perfectly wholesome and eminently suited for drinking and household purposes. As received, both samples were quite murky, almost milky, in appearance. On allowing them to stand, perfect subsidence took place, leaving the supernatant water colorless and brilliant. A microscopic examination of the sediment showed it to consist of very fine rock matter, chiefly fragments of quartzite.