In The Story of the English (American Book Company) the more prominent facts of English history from the beginning to the present time are related by H. A. Guerber in simple, brief narratives. A commendable feature of the book is the insistence in the preface of the essential oneness of the English and American people—an idea that can hardly be too sedulously cultivated. The author's principal object has been to render pupils so familiar with the prominent characters of English history that they shall henceforth seem like old acquaintances, and, in addition, to make the story attractive; but it is a fact to be regretted that he has regarded the growth of English law and liberty and the changes in religion as too unintelligible and uninteresting to be more than touched upon "very briefly and in the most simple way." The growth of law and liberty are the very things that it is most important to fix the attention of children upon, and it is only because they have suffered comparative neglect in the education of teachers in favor of stories of war and intrigue that they are not the most intelligible and interesting branch of the subject.

Prof. Francis E. Nipher, of Washington University, having been called upon to present a paper to an educational convention on the Greater Efficiency of Science Instruction, undertook to show how such changes as were adapted to promote that end might be accomplished without radical departures from present methods; and the Introduction to Graphical Algebra (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 60 cents) is the result of that effort. The author believes that the study of algebra and geometry as distinct subjects having no relation to each other gives the pupil a false idea of the intellectual situation of to-day; that by injecting here and there into the ordinary instruction in algebra such material as is found in his book, new meaning will be given to the operations involved in the solution of equations, and new interest in the subject may be aroused; and that as scientific investigators are making much use of other methods than Euclid's, while the study of his geometry should not be banished from our schools, some of the time given to it might be usefully spent in elementary analytical geometry or graphical algebra. The treatise is brief and convenient in size and composed in clear language.

The New Man, a Chronicle of the Modern Time (Philadelphia: The Levytype Company), is a story written by Ellis Paxson Oberholzer with reference to that expansion of women's education and sphere of action which is suggested by the phrase "the new woman." In it "the new woman is developed to her logical conclusion, and the new man as he must needs become under the reaction of her influence," and it deals with "men and women imbued with the modern university spirit, whose emotional natures are developed under the scientific impulse of our time, and whose thoughts and actions reflect that impulse in the midst of all the varied realities of our modern life."

Armageddon (Rand, McNally & Co.), to the plot of which the author's name of Stanley Waterloo seems curiously appropriate, is possibly a specimen of a class of literature to which we are likely to be treated in abundance for a few years to come. The spoliation of the Spanish Egyptians by the Americans having come to a halt with the gain of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the great Anglo-American alliance enters upon the view and is made a fact, though informally. The two nations together build the Nicaragua Canal, and are about to celebrate its completion, when they are anticipated by the precipitation of the war of the nations through the simultaneous occurrence of a number of slight international quarrels in different parts of the world. Germany, Russia, the Scandinavians, and the Latins are pitted on one side, and the British and Americans, assisted by the British colonies and the Japanese, on the other; and the battle of the combined fleets occurs near the Canaries. The hero of the story has invented an air ship which carries terrible explosives to be dropped from a great height into the midst of the enemy. This engine does its work at the decisive moment, and then follows the grab game of negotiations, in which might rules, and Germany joins the Anglo-Saxon alliance against the rest of the world. Finally, the air-ship engine of destruction has rendered war henceforth forever impossible.

Mr. James Reid Cole, president of a classical and military school at Dallas, Texas, has published under the title of Miscellany what is substantially a picture or transcript of his own life. It contains a variety of articles—literary essays, school addresses, and even schoolboy compositions—the chief interest of which is to the author and his close friends. Other papers, such as A Bird's-eye View of Johnston's Surrender, the sketches of the Life of Lieutenant C. C. Cole, the Looking Backward over the course of the author's own life, and political and legislative speeches may have a more general value as partial reflections of the times to which they relate, more intimate than are usually to be derived from ordinary sketches and histories.

The publications of the New York Academy of Sciences now consist of two series—the Annals (8vo) and the Memoirs (4to). The Transactions, in which the shorter papers and business reports have hitherto appeared, are abolished, and the matter appears in the Annals. This publication, which was begun in 1824, contains the scientific contributions and reports of researches, together with the reports of meetings. The complete volumes will hereafter coincide with the calendar year. Vol. X, Nos. 1 to 12, contains three papers by H. S. Davis and one by Frank Schesinger based on the Rutherfurd photographs of the stars; The Nature and Origin of Stipules, by A. A. Tyler, and an examination of the Ascidian Half-Embryo, by H. E. Crampton, Jr. Vol. XI, Part II, contains the annual address of retiring President J. J. Stevenson, February 28, 1898, on the Debt of the World to Pure Science, and six articles on special subjects in biology.

The Commissioner of Labor was authorized by Congress in 1895 to make an investigation, so far as it could be done within the limits of the regular appropriations to his department, relative to the economic aspects of the liquor traffic. He interpreted such an investigation to include the consideration of monetary conditions; of the agricultural and other products used in the production of liquors; of the manufacture of liquors as a distinct industry; of transportation, consumption, and the traffic in them; of the revenue derived from them and the laws regulating its collection; and of the experience and practice of employers in relation to the use of intoxicants. In some of these phases of the subject the facts were not separable from those relating to other matters; in others, they were to be found in the reports of other departments; and original inquiry was necessary only with reference to the last three items of the category. The results of this inquiry are given in the Twelfth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1897, under the heading of Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem.

A New Story of the Stars is an essay in which A. W. Bickerton, professor of chemistry and physics in Christ Church College, New Zealand, sets forth a theory of the origin of universes or of parts of universes by impact. Nebulæ already existing—but how existing we are not informed—careering through space, are supposed to collide, whereby heat and light are developed. They may meet in face, and would then probably coalesce, but more likely the impact would be a grazing one, when three bodies would be produced; a portion, or slice, as the author calls it, of each of the colliding bodies would be sheared off, forming an intensely hot and bright new star, while the original masses would go on their course, having the parts that had been in contact heated and made brilliant, so as to present in their revolutions the aspect of variable stars. The author's attention was drawn to this subject by the appearance of a new star in Cygnus in 1877. A little while afterward Nova Aurigæ appeared, presenting exactly the phenomena he had predicted. Professor Bickerton writes as one who understands his subject; there is nothing in his speculations, so far as we have observed, that grates harshly with known facts, and it can be read, as he reads it, to account plausibly for some of the facts—just as can several other theories of the formation of the universe which are still only speculations. The problem is yet far from comprehension, and is one of the legacies which the nineteenth century is destined to bequeath to the twentieth. (Published at Christ Church, New Zealand.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Connecticut: Twenty-second Annual Report, for 1898, Part I, Fertilizers. Pp. 101.—Cornell University: No. 163. Three Important Fungous Diseases of the Sugar Beet. By B. M. Duggar. Pp. 30; No. 164. Peach-Leaf Cure, etc. By B. M. Duggar. Pp. 20.—Massachusetts Agricultural College (Hatch Station): No. 58. Manurial Requirements of Crops. Pp 16.—New Jersey: No. 135. Poisonous Plants. By Byron D. Halsted. Pp. 28.—North Dakota Weather and Crop Service, Fifth Annual Report. B. H. Bronson, section director. Pp. 78; Monthly Reports for October and November, 1898. Pp. 8 each.—Ohio: No. 96. The Army Worm and Other Insects. By P. M. Webster and C. W. Mally. Pp. 26; No. 97. Some Diseases of Wheat and Oats. By A. D. Selby. Pp. 32; No. 98. Small Fruits. By W. J. Green. Pp. 146.—West Virginia: No. 53. Commercial Fertilizers. By J. H. Stewart and B. H. Hite. Pp. 36.