LITERARY NOTICES. 



561 



that " work is worship " ; that a quack is a False- 

 hood Incarnate; that on a lie nothing can be 

 built; that the victim of wrong suffers less than 

 the wrong-doer ; that man has a soul that cannot 

 be satisfied with meats or drinks, fine palaces 

 and millions of money, or stars and ribbons 

 this is the one single peal of bells upon which 

 the seer of Chelsea has rung a succession of 

 changes, with hardly a note of variation, for over 

 half a century. Anything more musty or som- 

 niferous than these utterances, so far as their 

 substance is concerned, can hardly be found 

 outside of Blair's sermons. Coming from a 

 common writer, they would induce a sleepiness 

 whicli neither " poppy, maudragora, nor all the 

 drowsy sirups of this world " could rival in pro- 

 ducing. But preached in the strong, rugged 

 words and with the tremendous emphasis of Car- 

 lyle ; enforced by sensational contrasts and epic 

 interrogations ; made vivid by personification, 

 apostrophe, hyperbole, and enlivened by picto- 

 rial illustration these old saws, which are really 

 the essence of all morality, instead of making 

 us yawn, startle us like original and novel fan- 

 cies. 



The volume comprises upward of twenty 

 essays, among which " The Duty of Praise," 

 " A Plea for the Erring," " Hot-house Edu- 

 cation," " The Art of Listening," and '' Office- 

 Seeking," are especially noteworthy. 



The Bolometer and Radiant Energy. By 

 Professor S. P. Langley. Reprinted 

 from the " Proceedings of the American 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences." Cam- 

 bridge : University Press. Pp. 16. 



The Bolometer. By Professor S. P. Lang- 

 ley, Allegheny Observatory, Pennsylva- 

 nia. Read before the American Metro- 

 logical Society, December, 1880. New 

 York : Published by the Society. Pp. V. 



Recognizing that the prism does not 

 give the true values for the heat of the spec- 

 trum, and that it displaces the maximum 

 ordinate of the heat-curve, the author has 

 constructed and used a new apparatus the 

 " Bolometer," or " Actinic Balance," for the 

 purpose of gaining a more actual value of 

 the heat, the description of which and its 

 operation is the chief purpose of these pa- 

 pers. With this instrument he has reached 

 the interesting and unexpected conclusion 

 that " the great proportion of all solar heat 

 received at the earth's surface does not ap- 

 parently lie in the non -luminous parts of 

 the spectrum. Not only is the heat-maxi- 

 mum in the luminous part, but the total 

 sum of non-luminous heat (so far at least as 

 our measures extend) is relatively small." 

 VOL. XIX. 36 



Second German Book after the Natural 

 OR Pestalozzian Method for Schools 

 AND lIoME Instruction. By James H. 

 WoRMAN, A. M., author of a Series for 

 Modern Languages, etc., and Professor in 

 the Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, New 

 York. New York and Chicago : A. S. 

 Barnes & Co. Pp. 84. Price, 40 cents. 



The plan of the course of which this 

 volume is a part has been developed during 

 the practice of teaching German. Its gen- 

 eral features are exclusive use of the Ger- 

 man language without the help of the learn- 

 er's vernacular; attention to grammatical 

 and lexical details ; the deduction of the 

 rules from the examples ; teaching by con- 

 trast and association ; and graded lessons 

 made up of conversations on familiar topics, 

 so arranged as to supply a stock of words 

 for daily use in common affairs. 



Report on Foreign Life-saving Appara- 

 tus. By Lieutenant D. A. Lyle, Ord- 

 nance Department, U. S. A. Washing- 

 ton: Government Printing-office. Pp.48, 

 with Nineteen Plates. 



Several lots of foreign life-saving rock- 

 ets were sent to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 

 the spring of IS'ZQ, for examination and 

 trial, under the inspection of the author. 

 They were stored for several months under 

 ordinary conditions of exposure, and then 

 inspected and experimented with. The re- 

 port describes the experiments and the re- 

 sults obtained with the Russian, German, 

 English, and Hooper apparatus. 



Geological Survey of Alabama : Report 

 OF Progress for 1879 and 1880. By 

 EcGENE A. Smith, Ph. D., State Geolo- 

 gist. Montgomery, Alabama : Allred & 

 Beers, State Printers. Pp. 158, with 

 Maps. 



The principal feature of the operations 

 was the survey of the Black Warrior River 

 and Warrior Coal Field, from Tuscaloosa to 

 Sipsey Fork, conducted with a view partly 

 to estimate the resources of the country, 

 partly to ascertain the nature and extent of 

 the obstructions to navigation, and the cost 

 of removing or overcoming them. A report, 

 by Henry McCalley, on the counties lying 

 north of the Tennessee River is also in- 

 cluded. Particular reports, with analysis, 

 are given of fifty mines or outcrops of coal 

 in the Warrior Field. 



