Among the general papers in the second volume, containing Parts II and III, of the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1896-'97 are those on Federal and State Aid to Higher Education, the First Common Schools of New England, the Learned Professions and Social Control, and the Beginnings of the Common-School System in the South. Statistics of foreign universities are given, with a paper on the Teaching of Geography in certain foreign countries, and consular reports on educational topics. Professor Boas's paper on the Growth of Toronto Children is included. Educational matters of interest in various States are reported upon. An Eskimo vocabulary is introduced. A special report on education in Alaska appears. Part III is devoted to statistical matter.
The Occult Science Library is a course of seven essays on the subject of practical occultism by Ernest Loomis. The author assumes that the rules based on the occult principles of Nature would, if fully applied, enable any person to invoke the assistance of occult forces in every practical rule of life, and that they may with like success be applied in matters of health, the acquisition of knowledge, the formation of plans, and the solution of religious and ethical enigmas. The publishers claim that the maxims of the book have proved their efficiency to the satisfaction of thousands who have read them. (Published by Ernest Loomis & Co., Chicago.)
Mr. James G. Needham has furnished, in Outdoor Studies (American Book Company), one of the fullest and most systematic guides or "reading books," as he calls this one, for Nature study that we have seen. Recognizing that there is no lack, in numbers, of books offering object lessons, etc., for children of the earlier years intervening between the primary and the high school, he has prepared this book to supply for the later years of that period "a few lessons of greater continuity, calling for more persistence of observation and introducing a few of the simpler of our modern conceptions of Nature at large." The lessons presuppose some years of experience of life and some previous training in observation; they are given simply for the sake of the interest and educative value of the facts and phenomena of Nature which they set forth; and they have been written more for the boys and girls than for the teachers. The things described—birds, insects, plants, etc.—are such as can be seen anywhere. Mr. Needham tells how to study them and learn what they mean.
In Commissioner Hume, a Story of New York Schools, a sequel to Roderick Hume, the Story of a New York Teacher, Mr. C. W. Bardeen has undertaken to give a picture of rural New York schools, or rather of the administration of school affairs by commissioners as they were in 1875, and he declares it to be accurate. He represents, however, that the general tone of the commissioners has vastly changed in the period that has intervened since then, and the conditions described in the volume no longer prevail. The book is offered, therefore, as a contribution to educational history. (Published by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.)
The southern half of Missouri and the Black Hills of South Dakota offer exceptionally delightful regions for the study of caves, or speleology, as well as of geology and geography. Each of these regions has its peculiar geological history and its own scenery, and possesses a number of truly wonderful caves. Some of the more important of these caves and the scenery amid which they lie are described by Mrs. Luella Agnes Owen in the book Cave Regions of the Black Hills (Cincinnati: the Editor Publishing Company), and we have been much interested in reading the accounts. The descriptions are introduced by summaries of the methods of the formation of caves and of the results of the geological and topographical explorations of the regions in which they are situated, as presented in official reports and scientific memoirs. The descriptions are for the most part relations of the author's personal explorations of the caves. The most important of these caves are Marble Cave, "the finest yet explored in Missouri," and Wind Cave, in South Dakota, said to be the largest known after the Mammoth Cave. Others are Fairy, Powell, Stone County, Oregon County Caves and the Grand Gulf in Missouri, and the Onyx and Crystal Caves in South Dakota. Many illustrations are given. The author has fine descriptive powers, but her literary style needs discipline. She is the first American, and the only woman, so far, elected to membership in the Société de Speleologie of Paris.
A valuable paper on Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts is published by Mr. Fred S. Hall as the first number of the eleventh volume of the Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law. In it, the author having fixed the definition of sympathetic strikes and lockouts as distinguished from those not sympathetic, and having found the difference between a strike and a lockout, discusses the origin and development of the two sympathetic movements, analyzes them, and forecasts the future as it is indicated by the past. Illustrations are freely drawn from the important strikes and lockouts that have occurred in the United States and abroad for a number of years past.
The Year Book of Colorists and Dyers, in the opinion of the author, Mr. Harwood Huntington, supplies a want, for, so far as he is aware, there are no other portable works in the English language to which the color-chemist can refer and find the information which he requires the oftenest. The object of the present publication is to meet the demand for a review of the advances made annually in the special field worked in by dyers and colorists—in the bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing of textiles—and it endeavors to do this with accuracy and brevity. (Published by the author, New York.)
The first number of The Socialist Almanac and Treasury of Facts has been issued in accordance with a decision of the National Convention of the Socialist Labor Party, held in New York in July, 1896. It has been prepared by Lucien Sanial, to whom the task was assigned by the National Executive Committee. A large proportion of it is historical, and consists mainly of monographs presenting views of the movements and condition of "militant socialism" in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, from its beginning to the present day. Special attention is invited by the author to the monographs on Italy and Spain as tracing the struggle between socialism and anarchism to its beginning. The second part of the book contains statistical matter and comments on economical and social conditions, which, if the argument on "Who owns the Savings?" is a specimen of its quality, must be accepted with many reservations.
Prof. William Wadden Turner, a native of England who came to this country at an early age, became an eminent scholar in Oriental literature, and in 1842 a professor of that subject in Union Theological Seminary. He was called thence to Washington in 1852 to organize the library of the Patent Office, where his work was of great value. Thence he was taken by Professor Baird to catalogue and arrange the library of the Smithsonian Institution. He associated his sister with him in this work and as recorder of scientific collections and exchanges in 1858. She continued there after his death the next year, and served the library faithfully and efficiently, going with it to the Congressional Library when it was removed there, till 1886, when she resigned on account of age. She died in 1896. A Memorial of the two and of their elder sister Susan has been prepared by Mrs. Caroline H. Dall and has been printed privately.