272 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



productive labor, and other economic concepts, giving also the opinions 

 held by the Roman and Greek jurists as to what things are wealth. He 

 then discusses the views of Adam Smith, pointing out what he regards as 

 Smith's chief merits and chief defects. In a similar manner the economic 

 doctrines held by Ricardo, Whately, Say, Mill, Bastiat, Perry, and Jevons 

 are critically examined. He also describes his own contributions to the 

 science. In pursuance of his conviction that a great part of the confusion 

 and false teaching in economics is due to lack of clear definitions, he 

 devotes the remaining three fourths of the volume to setting forth the legal 

 and scientific bases of the chief concepts of the science. Among these con- 

 cepts are acceptilation, accommodation paper, banking, capital, currency, 

 cost of production, credit, debt, exchange, Gresham's law, money, negative 

 quantities in economics, rent, value, and wealth. Each is discussed with 

 considerable fullness, particular attention being given to the early history 

 of the ideas. Macleod is a vigorous and positive writer, and a study of his 

 pages can not fail to substitute exactness for many hazy economic teach- 

 ings. 



With modesty and excellent taste Mrs. Rogers has presented to the pub- 

 lic, not a fulsome eulogy, but a view of her husband's life as shown in his 

 letters, supplemented only by the necessary biographical facts and a para- 

 graph here and there to explain and connect the matter from his own 

 pen.* Many of the biographical facts she allows the late Dr. Ruschen- 

 berger to tell in extracts from his Memorial of the Brothers Rogers. The 

 son of a physician and professor of science, to whose chair in William and 

 Mary College he succeeded at the age of twenty-four, William B. Rogers 

 was early introduced into the field of scientific education, in which he did 

 masterly work up to the last hour of his life. There was not much money 

 available for the support of science in the United States during the thirties, 

 and the teaching and research of Prof. Rogers were carried on with very 

 limited resources. His means, moreover, were frequently drawn upon for 

 the benefit of his brothers, who were struggling in the same field with 

 rather less material success than his. In 1835, at the age of thirty-one, 

 Prof. Rogers was appointed State Geologist of Virginia, and in the same 

 year was called to the chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of 

 Virginia, which he retained until 1853. The geological sm^vey was al- 

 lowed by the State Legislature to continue for seven years, and furnished 

 the occasion for undertaking what was Prof. Rogers's most extensive con- 

 tribution to natural science. The letters exchanged between William and 

 his brothers reveal something of the turbulence of hot blooded students 

 and the paralyzing influence of narrow-minded authority with which 

 many science professors had to contend half a century ago. All the im- 

 portant discoveries and controversies that mark the history of geology in 

 this century are discussed or at least remarked upon in these letters. In 

 the diction of many of the epistles, and especially in that of extracts from 

 several addresses that are inserted in the volumes, we find all the evidence 

 that can be given without his living voice as to the powers of oratory with 

 which Prof. Rogers has been credited. We are especially impressed with 

 the testimony of these volumes to the ability of their subject as an educa- 



* Life and Letters of William Barton Eogers. Edited by his Wife with the aseistance of William 

 T.Sedgwick. Boston: Iloughton, Mifflin & Co. Two vols., 12mo. Price, $4. 



