Dr. W. Detmer's Practical Plant Physiology[15] is a book of experiments for the use of teachers as well as of students in higher-grade schools, and supplies an aid to the study of the whole of that branch of the science by experimental processes. While the arrangement of the material in the second German edition is essentially the same as in the first, nearly every section has been enlarged or remodeled, and the book is essentially a new one; new experiments have been included for lecture demonstration or private work, and pains have been taken to render the book increasingly useful to serious students of plant physiology, especially to those who desire to familiarize themselves with methods of research. Great care has been taken in the selection of research material recommended for the experiments; and material suitable for winter work has received attention as well as summer material. This second German edition is presented by the publishers in the translation in its entirety, without addition or alteration. The two great divisions of the book are into the Physiology of Nutrition and the Physiology of Growth and Movements resulting from Irritability. In the first division the experiments bear upon the food of plants (assimilation, production of proteids, constituents of the ash, and organic compounds as food for plants); the molecular forces and processes (including movements of gases, absorption and movements of water, and absorption of mineral substances in plants); and metabolic processes in the plant. In the second division the characteristics of growing plant structures, the conditions necessary for growth, the influence of internal causes and external conditions; geotropic, heliotropic, and hydrotropic mutations, and other phenomena of irritability; the winding of tendrils and twining plants; dorsicentrality, polarity, and anisotropy and phenomena of correlation; and movements of variation, are presented.
The primary objects of Mr. Hoffman's The Sphere of Science[16] are to point out what constitutes a science, and set forth the ground upon which every science rests and the principles and rules that must be followed in order to construct one. The author maintains throughout that every department of knowledge is capable of scientific treatment, and must be so treated before any great advance can be made toward a consistent and rational conception of the universe. The subjects are considered in succession of the true conception and aims of science, what it takes for granted, the scientific method, certainty and probability in science, the use of the imagination, analogy as an aid, the limitations of science, recent advances in the physical sciences, the old and new psychology, modern scientific ethics, philosophy as the science of the sciences, and the harmony of the sciences. The author holds that the chief need in all departments of thought is not so much mere facts as a new arrangement and classification of facts already at hand; that we can be certain of no doctrine, but the most we can do to establish it is to show that the balance of probabilities is in favor of it; that philosophy is the life of science and science the vital breath of philosophy, and if one is severed from the other both pine away and die; and that those scientific researches are successful which are not exclusively special, but are illuminated by an ample idea of science. The book is the outcome of a series of lectures given to classes in Union College to supplement their work in formal logic.
The Text-Book of Geodetic Astronomy[17] was prepared by Mr. John F. Hayford to meet the conditions of the course at Cornell University, the terms of which the standard works now in use could not be made to fit. The purpose of the book is to furnish a text short and easy enough to be mastered by the student of civil engineering in a single college term which shall give him a sufficiently exact and extensive knowledge of geodetic astronomy to serve as a basis for practice in that line after graduation. While it is primarily a manual for students, the author has endeavored to insert such matter, tables, and convenient formulas as would make it of value also to the engineer making astronomical observations. Mathematical processes have been omitted, except those that are actually necessary for developing the working formulas, and simple and special means for deriving the formulas have been chosen in every case admitting choice. Considerable attention has been devoted to a discussion of the various sources of error in each kind of observations. Those formulas have been selected, so far as possible, that lead to accurate and rapid computation.
L'Année Psychologique[18] of M. Alfred Binet and his colaborers in the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology of the Sorbonne, Paris, is now in its fourth year, and the four volumes present a compendium of the psychological studies and literature of the period they cover, the value of which will be appreciated by any one who has occasion to examine the work. The first volume was a book of 619 pages, with 33 figures; the second, of 1010 pages, 141 figures, and several plates; the third, of 825 pages, 103 figures, and numerous plates; and the present volume has 849 pages and 117 figures. The plan of all the volumes is the same; it is to present in full the labors of the laboratory, with original memoirs, and to give a condensed but adequate and classified summary of the world's literature of the year relating to the subject. The present volume contains twenty-seven original memoirs, mostly by Professor Binet and M. N. Vaschide, with others by M. B. Bourdon and Mr. A. Le Clère; about ninety reviews of books and papers, classified under sixteen heads, according as they relate to the physiology of the nervous system, the several senses, mental faculties and operations, movements, individual psychology and character, sleep, dreams, and pathological cases, and animal psychology; a bibliography, also classified, of 123 pages; and an index of authors, occupying 17 double-columned pages.
Prof. Cyrus Thomas has given, in his Introduction to the Study of North American Archæology,[19] a brief summary of the progress in the investigation and study of the subject which has been made up to the present time. The increased activity among students, the numerous explorations made, the accumulation of data and the flood of light thrown on questions relating to prehistoric North America since the publication of the last general work on it seemed to call for such a summary. While the author's chief object is to present and arrange the data so as to afford the student some means of bringing into harmony and utilizing the facts and materials at hand, yet, in view of the impossibility of presenting a full account of the archæological remains of the continent, and discussing all the questions connected with them in a single small volume, only those considered the best representatives of the leading types and those which best illustrate the arts, customs, and culture status of the former inhabitants are referred to. The movements and remains are treated under the three heads of the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific divisions; the first including the works of the Eskimos, the second those of the mound builders, and the third the curious variety of works scattered along the Pacific coast, and in Mexico and Central America, rising to great elaboration in the latter countries. Theories have to be considered, though they are all still uncertain, and Professor Thomas notices the various views which have been expressed as to the origin of the works and the people who executed them. He himself believes that they are all the work of the peoples who lived here when America was discovered, and are represented by the present Indians; that they are not of a very extreme antiquity; and that the continent was peopled by tribes who came down from the northwest through the region between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains.