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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other stood up for the defense of American 

 legislative methods as developments of 

 American political conditions. The author 

 has sought a mean between these schools, 

 and has tried to glean from contemporary 

 debates, memoirs, newspapers, and other 

 records the reasons assigned for each innova- 

 tion as it has entered and enlarged the codes, 

 and has taken the testimony of contempora- 

 ry legislators upon the conditions prevailing 

 in successive stages in the history of the 

 national House and Senate. Among the les- 

 sons presented by the book are those of the 

 tremendous power wielded by the speaker of 

 the House of Representatives and of "other 

 anomalies in a supposed elective folk con- 

 gress." 



Whittdker's Mechanical Engineer's Pock- 

 et Book, prepared by Philip R. Bjorling, if it 

 does not contain everything, contains a great 

 many facts and formulas concerning matters 

 on which the mechanician is often called 

 upon to seek immediate information, a con- 

 siderable proportion of which are not easily 

 subject to systematic classification. Among 

 the one hundred and thirty formulas and pro- 

 cesses are those relating to the flow and force 

 of water and wind, the pressure of gases and 

 the air, the weight, proportions, and strength 

 of parts of machinery ; stresses, rate of de- 

 livery of elevators, etc., gauges, tables of 

 areas and circumferences, squares, cubes, 

 fourth and fifth powers and roots, and items 

 which can be indicated only by viewing them 

 in detail. It is a valuable and indispensable 

 companion for the mechanical engineer. 

 The Macmillan Company. Price, $1.75. 



M. J. Costanfin conceives that science 

 consists in something more than the mere 

 accumulation, description, and classification 

 of facts, with which too many persons con- 

 found 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 ap- 

 plies this principle to the evolution of plant 

 life in his book Lcs Vegetaux et les Milieux 

 Cosmiqnes (Plants and Cosmic Media) — adap- 

 tative evolution, which is essentially a study 

 of the operation of the various material fac- 

 tors of the environment on growth and de- 

 velopment. " 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 de- 

 cisive 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 Felix Alcan, 

 Paris, in the Bibliotheque Scientifique Inter- 

 nationale.) 



Mr. A. G. EllioWs little work on Indus- 

 trial Electricity — a translation and adapta- 

 tion from the French of Henry D. Graffigny 

 — is the first and introductory volume of an 

 electro-mechanical series published by Whit- 

 taker & Co., London, and the Macmillan 

 Company, New York. The editor, in intro- 

 ducing 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 elec- 

 tricity. Many thousand copies of the origi- 

 nal French editions have been sold. The 

 present volume is divided into short chap- 

 ters, each dealing with a separate branch of 

 practical electricity — its nature, the units, 

 magnetism and indnction, practical measure- 

 ment, chemical generators, accumulators, dy- 

 namo-electric machinery, electric light, elec- 

 tricity 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 Bos- 

 ton 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 inves- 

 tigations, and worked for nearly three months 

 on the development and on the physiology of 

 the sense organs of the Cubomcdusce. After 



