Now that is exactly what nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of us want, if it isn’t dry. And it isn’t dry. Few of those who have the wonderful knowledge of what is going on in the learned world have the gift of popular explanation—the gift of telling of it. Mr. Allen has that gift; the knowledge, the teaching grace, the popular faculty.
Common Sense Science. By Grant Allen. 318 pages. $1.50. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
By no means a list of new-found facts; but the bearings of them on common subjects.
We don’t go on talking as if the earth were the centre of things, as if Galileo never lived. Huxley and Spencer have got to be heard. Shall we wait two hundred and fifty years?
The book is simply an easy means of intelligence.
There is nothing more dreary than chemistry taught as it used to be taught to beginners. There is nothing brighter and fuller of keen delight than chemistry taught as it can be taught to little children even.
Real Fairy Folks. By Lucy Rider Meyer, A. M. 389 pages. $1.25. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
“I’ll be their teacher—give them private scientific lectures! Trust me to manage the school part!” The book is alive with the secrets of things.