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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



long travel." Whence it is learned that different races can not have mutual 

 comprehension. Luckily for the student who is unable to travel, the same 

 phenomenon may be observed in the gulf that separates the civilized man 

 and woman. Although highly educated, " they might converse with each 

 other for centuries without understanding one another." These differ- 

 ences between races and individuals demonstrate the falsity of the notion 

 of equality. Indeed, through science " man has learned that to be slaves 

 is the natural condition of all human beings." Naturally he becomes dis- 

 pirited, anarchy seizes upon the uneducated and sullen indifference the 

 more cultivated. " Like a ship that has lost its compass, the modern 

 man wanders haphazard through the spaces formerly peopled by the gods 

 and rendered a desert by science." In France morality is gradually dying 

 out, while the United States is threatened by a gigantic civil war. What 

 to do is problematical, since we are informed " that people have never de- 

 rived much advantage from too great a desire to reason and think," and 

 what is most harmful to a people is to attain too high a degree of intelli- 

 gence and culture, the groundwork of the soul beginning to decline when 

 this level is reached. The remedy suggested to us is " the organization 

 of a very severe military service and the permanent menace of disastrous 

 wars." But if we fail to see the improving tendency of this advice, it is 

 probably because we are like historians, " simple-minded," while Dr. Le 

 Bon is much too complex for our understanding. According to his own 

 theory, there is no hope that we may comprehend him, since the outpour- 

 ings of a soul of the Latin race can not be transferred by a simple bridge 

 of translation to the apprehension of an Anglo-Saxon mind, separated, as 

 he would term it, by " the dead weight of thousands of generations." 



GENERAL NOTICES. 



In preparing the new edition of his Text- 

 Book of Mineralogy * first published in 1877, 

 Prof. E. 8. Dana has found it necessary to 

 rewrite the whole as well as to add much 

 new matter and many new illustrations. The 

 work being designed chiefly for use in class 

 or private instruction, the choice of topics 

 discussed, the order and fullness of treat- 

 ment, and the method of presentation have 

 been determined by that object. The differ- 

 ent types of crystal forms are described 

 under the thirty-two groups now accepted, 

 classed according to their symmetry. In the 

 chapters on physical and chemical mineral- 

 ogy, the plan of the former edition is retained 

 of presenting somewhat fully the elementary 

 principles of the science on which the min- 

 eral characters depend, and the author has 

 tried to give the student the means of be- 

 coming practically familiar with the modern 



* A Text-Book of Mineralogy, with an Ex- 

 tended Treatise on Crystallography and Physical 

 Mineralogy. By Edmund Salisbury Dana. New 

 edition, entirely rewritten and enlarged. New 

 York : John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 593. $4. 



means of investigation. Especial attention 

 is given to the optical qualities of crystals as 

 revealed by the microscope ; and frequent 

 references are introduced to important pa- 

 pers on the different subjects discussed. The 

 descriptive part of the volume is essentially 

 an abridgment of the sixth edition of Dana's 

 System of Mineralogy, published in 1892, 

 to which the student is referred for fuller 

 and supplementary information. A full 

 topical index is furnished in addition to the 

 usual index of species. 



The title, The Story of the Railroad* 

 carries with it the suggestion of an eventful 

 history. The West, in the author's view, be- 

 gins with the Missouri River. The story of 

 its railroad is the story of the line, now very 

 multiple, that leads to the Pacific Ocean. 

 The beginning of white men's travels in 

 these routes is traced by the editor to the 

 Spanish adventurers of the sixteenth century, 



* The Story of the Railroad. By Cy Warman. 

 New York : D. Appleton and Company (Story of 

 the West Series). Pp. 280. Price, SI 50. 



