M. J. Costantin conceives that science consists in something more than the mere accumulation, description, and classification of facts, with which too many persons confound it, and that the important thing is what the facts teach, and, as related to it or as what may help to find it out, the theories that may be deduced from them. He applies this principle to the evolution of plant life in his book Les Végétaux et les Milieux Cosmiques (Plants and Cosmic Media)—adaptative evolution, which is essentially a study of the operation of the various material factors of the environment on growth and development. "Guided by Goethe's ideas, he invites us to witness the incessant variations of organized existence everywhere visible in Nature," under the influence of cold and heat, light, gravity, and the aquatic medium, hoping in these studies to find new and decisive arguments in favor of transformist conceptions. He aims to show how the new characteristics produced by changes in the influence of these factors to which plants are subjected may be fixed and gradually become hereditary. (Published by Félix Alcan, Paris, in the Bibliothèque Scientifique Internationale.)
Mr. A. G. Elliot's little work on Industrial Electricity—a translation and adaptation from the French of Henry D. Graffigny—is the first and introductory volume of an electro-mechanical series published by Whittaker & Co., London, and the Macmillan Company, New York. The editor, in introducing the volumes, expresses the belief that there is room for them because they explain in very clear and non-mathematical language the many and various applications of electricity. Many thousand copies of the original French editions have been sold. The present volume is divided into short chapters, each dealing with a separate branch of practical electricity-its nature, the units, magnetism and induction, practical measurement, chemical generators, accumulators, dynamo-electric machinery, electric light, electricity as a motive power, electric chemistry and electro-plating, bells and telephones, and telegraphs. In the succeeding volumes of the series the more important branches of the subjects touched upon here will be treated separately and in detail.
Franklin Story Conant was born in Boston in 1870; was educated in the public schools of New England, at the University of South Carolina, and at Williams College; and was a Doctor of Philosophy, Fellow, and Adam T. Bruce Fellow in Johns Hopkins University. He showed great appetency for biological investigation and devoted himself to it, at Baltimore, Beaufort, N. C., Wood's Hole, and in Jamaica. He published a few papers of mark, and would have published many more if he had lived. He went to Jamaica in June, 1897, to continue his investigations, and worked for nearly three months on the development and on the physiology of the sense organs of the Cubomedusæ. After the death of the director of the expedition, Dr. J. E. Humphrey, he took the burden upon himself, and labored faithfully till he contracted yellow fever; returned to Boston, and died there September 13, 1897. His associates of Johns Hopkins University have published as a memorial volume of him his dissertation on The Cubomedusæ, which he presented at the examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in June, 1897, accompanied by a brief notice of his life and a portrait.
Frederick H. Ripley and Thomas Tapper, authors of the Natural Music Course, have arranged A Short Course in Music, consisting of two books, for use in schools in which the more complete course is deemed unnecessary or impracticable. In both books familiar songs are made the basis of elementary music instruction. In these songs the compositions of the best song writers are represented. Exercises in two and three parts in simple form are included in the course. A brief summary of elementary theory is inserted in the appendix. Few definitions are given, the thought of the learner being so directed as to render them either unnecessary or obvious. In the cultivation of tone and expression the authors insist that it is the mind rather than the vocal organs that at first needs attention. "If the pupil hears the ideal tone he will almost instinctively imitate it." A number of portraits of composers are given in connection with the songs. (American Book Company. Price, 35 cents.)
Mr. Alfred Still, believing that there was still room for a small book in which the principles determining the behavior of single-phase alternating currents under various conditions should be considered less from the point of view of the man of science than from that of the engineer, offers Alternating Currents of Electricity and the Theory of Transformers for the place. The book has been written, not only for engineering students, but also for those engineers who, while having extensive practical knowledge of the subject, are yet anxious to get a correct elementary idea of the leading principles involved. Graphical methods are used throughout, and the introduction of mathematics has been carefully avoided. (Published by Whittaker & Co., London; The Macmillan Company, New York. Price, $1.50.)