274 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the sources of plant-food and how it is ob- 

 tained. This is the most purely scientific 

 part, as all the explanations depend upon 

 chemistry. The author then takes up the 

 questions of the improvement of soils, the 

 use of manures, mineral fertilizers, rotation 

 of crops, and the selection and care of live- 

 stock. This is the more practical portion 

 of the book, and is full of well-digested in- 

 formation which should be got early into 

 the heads of farmers' boys. There is an 

 appendix describing a few simple experi- 

 ments, and then the customary questions to 

 aid the teacher in the recitations. 



Summer-Land Sketches, or Rambles in the 

 Backwoods of Mexico and Central 

 America. By Felix L. Oswald. With 

 numerous Illustrations. Philadelphia: 

 J. B. Lippincott & Co. Pp. 425. Price, 

 $3. 



This is a book of travel, adventure, and 

 observation in a wild and picturesque region, 

 upon which pen and pencil have been hith- 

 erto but little employed. It is besides a 

 scholarly study of the scenerj^, the natural 

 objects, the art-works, and the habits and 

 characters of the people that were met with, 

 and it is full of acute reflections and an in- 

 structive philosophy thoroughly imbued with 

 the modern scientific spirit. Its style is, 

 moreover, vivid, racy, crisp, and lively, so 

 that altoirether the work mav be commend- 

 ed to the reader as fresh, original, brilliant, 

 and solid. 



Dr. Oswald was stationed at Medellin, 

 near Vera Cruz, in 1867, as director of a 

 military lazaretto. Transferred afterward 

 to the Vera Cruz City Dispensary, he lost 

 his health, and, having got a notion that the 

 mountains of Mexico have great sanitary 

 claims, he resolved to go there and if pos- 

 sible reestablish his constitution. He ram- 

 bled about for several years, and this vol- 

 ume is one of the results of his experience. 

 Dr. Oswald has very decided views in regard 

 to some of the evil tendencies of civilization, 

 and was very happy in the great region that 

 has not yet been invaded by the destructive 

 agencies of civilized life. 



The following extract from his introduc- 

 tion, shadowing forth this idea, explains the 

 production of the book, and illustrates the 

 characteristics of the author's writing : 



In the course of the next eight years I ex- 

 plored the highlands of Jalisco, Oaxact, Colima, 

 and Vera Paz for the benefit of my own health or 

 that of my employers, hut, like the Catalan farm- 

 er, I found more than I sought. ludepeudence, 

 in the political sense, and a healthy climate, might 

 be found in the mountains of Scotland, and even 

 of Old Spain ; but the new Spanish sierras can 

 boast of a virgin soil, with primeval forests 

 which offer a sanitarium to all who seek a refuge 

 from the malady of our anti-nalural civilization 

 from the old marasmus which has spread from 

 the Syrian desert to the abandoned cotton-fields 

 of Georgia and Alabama. 



We vaunt our proficiency in the art of subju- 

 gating Nature, but in the New World the same 

 ambition has led to a very dear-bought victory 

 which the countries of the East have paid with 

 the loss of their manhood ; their wild woodlands 

 have been tamed into deserts, and their wild 

 freemen into slaves ; the curse of the blighted 

 land has recoiled upon its devastators. In our 

 eagerness to wrest the scepter from our Mother 

 Earth, we have invaded her domain with fire and 

 sword, and instead of increasing the interest of 

 our heritage we have devoured the principal ; 

 the brilliant progress of the vain god of earth la 

 tracked by a lengthening shadow the day-star 

 of our empire is approaching the western hori- 

 zon. 



Where shall it end? Mold, sandy loam, and 

 sand, is Liebig's degeneration scale of treeless 

 countries ; the American soil may pass through 

 the same phases, and what then ? Will the sun- 

 set in the West be followed by a new Eastern 

 sunrise ? Shall Asia, the mother of religions, 

 give birth to an earth-regenerating Messiah, 

 whose gospel shall teach us to recognize the 

 physical laws of God ? Or shall the gloaming 

 fade into the night of the Buddhistic Nirvana, 

 the final extinction of organic life on this plan- 

 et ? It is not much of a consolation to think 

 that in the latter case the nations of the higher 

 latitudes might count upon a protracted twilight. 

 The westward spread of the land-blight will 

 drive the famished millions of the Old World 

 upon our remaining woodlands, but the resources 

 of the last oasis will probably be husbanded with 

 Scotch canniness and Prussian systematism, and 

 before we share the fate of the Eastern nations 

 we may see the dawn of the bureaucratic mil- 

 lennium, when all our fields shall be fenced in 

 with brick walls, all rivers with irrigaiion-dikes, 

 and all functions of our domestic life with ofli- 

 cial laws and by-laws. My trust in the eternal 

 mercy of Providence lets me expect another 

 deluge before that time ; but the recuperative 

 agencies of unaided Nature seem powerless 

 against the greatest of all earthly evils. National 

 and territorial marasmus are incurable diseases; 

 the historical records of the Eastern Continents, 

 at least, prove nothing to the contrary. The 

 coast-lands of the Mediterranean were the plea- 

 sure gardens of the Juventus Mundi, the Elysian 

 Fields whose inhabitants celebrated life as a fes- 

 tival ; and now ? Spain, southern Italy, Tur- 

 key, Greece, and Persia have been wasted to a 

 shadow of their former self; ghouls and afrits 



