The American Book Company publishes as a part of the Eclectic System of Industrial Drawing an excellent manual of the Elements of Perspective, by Christine Gordon Sullivan, of the Cincinnati public schools. It consists of explicit directions and rules on the general principles of the art, with applications in Isometric Projection and Oblique Perspective, given in concise form and simple, clear language, amply illustrated, and supplemented by problems, in solving which the rules are made practical.
A convenient manual on Gas and Petroleum Engines has been prepared by A. G. Elliott from the French of Henry de Graffigny for Whittaker's Electro-Mechanical Series, in recognition of the interest that has been awakened in the application of such engines to supply the place now occupied by horses in drawing vehicles. One chapter deals exclusively with the theory of the gas engines. Other topics treated of are the history of the gas engine, the description of existing gas engines, carbureted air engines, petroleum engines, gas-generating plants, engines for use with poor gases, and the maintenance of gas and oil engines. (The Macmillan Company, 75 cents.)
Laboratory Exercises in Anatomy and Physiology (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 60 cents) have been prepared by James Edward Peabody for practical application. The precept is emphasized that the pupil should be led to see that most of the materials required for observation and experiment are furnished by the organs and tissues of his own body. Directions which have been found in the author's experience necessary to guide the pupil in his observations and experiments are given at the beginning of each topic. The questions following them contemplate the student's seeking the facts from the material itself, and he is expected to be trained to distinguish observed results from the inferences that may be drawn from them. Some home study is contemplated, the results to be afterward reported in class. The book consists almost entirely of directions for experiments, and is interlined with blank sheets for recording observations.
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.