562 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Angot concludes with a statement of the plausible but undemonstrable 

 theory recently proposed by Unterweger. To the body of the work is ap- 

 pended a Catalogue of the Auroras seen in Europe below latitude 55 from 

 1700 to 1890, filling eighty-eight pages. A large part of the data employed 

 in this volume were gathered in Lapland during the winter of 1838-'39 by 

 the expedition on board the Recherche, others are taken from Norden- 

 skiold's Voyage of the Vega, and still others from a variety of sources 

 which the author indicates. The book will go far toward giving the 

 general reader clear ideas in place of fragmentary notions. 



GENERAL NOTICES. 



The evolution of special lines of culture 

 is a most interesting study. Tylor's Primi- 

 tive Culture and Early History of Mankind 

 have been followed by a host of books of a 

 general or a special kind, in which almost 

 everything has been " traced." Curiously, 

 however, there is no serious work upon art 

 evolution using the term art in its wide 

 sense to include all the fine arts Tylor's 

 arts of pleasure. The book before us, 

 which is the fourth in the Anthropologi- 

 cal Series, undertakes to study the Begin- 

 nings of Art.* Dr. Grosse holds that in 

 modern savages we may safely hope to find 

 similar crude beginnings to those made by 

 primitive man long ago. He denies our right 

 to draw illustrations from among barbarous 

 or civilized peoples, and insists upon taking 

 them from savages only. In marking out 

 culture stages, he emphasizes the mode of 

 gaining food supply, and considers those 

 peoples only as savages Naturvolker who 

 depend upon hunting and wild food. There 

 are really few such peoples : the Australians, 

 Andamanese, Bushmen, Fuegians, Botocudos, 

 and Eskimos are about all. From these Dr. 

 Grosse collects his examples of primitive art 

 forms. There are two classes of arts arts 

 of rest (i. e., plastic and graphic) and arts of 

 motion (i. e., the dance, poetry, and music). 

 The former appear to begin with ornamenta- 

 tion and personal decoration, but real repre- 

 sentative art also begins early. The arts of 

 the dance, poetry, and music are usually 

 closely connected in savage life. Not only 

 does Dr. Grosse try to show how the various 

 art forms began, he also tries to show how 



* The Beginnings of Art. By Ernst Grosse. 

 The Anthropological Series. New York : D. Ap- 

 pleton & Co., 1897. Pp. xiv + 327, 16mo. Price, 

 $1.75. 



the art reacts upon the artist ; he traces the 

 social influence of arts. This is one of the 

 strikingly original features of the work. The 

 book is a translation from the German ; the 

 translator has done his part faithfully. The 

 book is perhaps the best that has so far ap- 

 peared in the Anthropological Series. 



Prof. Tarr has not undertaken to make 

 this book * a perfectly balanced treatise by 

 giving each part of his subject just the prom- 

 inence due to its intrinsic value. He has 

 made a book for a special purpose the in- 

 struction of pupils in high schools and has 

 proportioned it as he deems best for that 

 purpose. He believes that stratigraphical 

 geology should be, for the most part, left to 

 a more advanced stage than that of the sec- 

 ondary school, and so has included only its 

 main truths and some examples of its evi- 

 dence here. But with structural and dy- 

 namical geology, he suys, " the body of fact 

 necessary for elementary understanding is 

 not so great nor so difficult to grasp. The 

 teachings of these truths are illustrated on 

 every hand, and, in fact, some of them are 

 already familiar to the pupil before he en- 

 ters upon the study. They deal with phe- 

 nomena in the midst of which we dwell, and 

 hence should become a part of the mental 

 possessions of every high-school pupil." 

 Accordingly, he devotes about three fifths 

 of the volume to the djTiamic side of the 

 subject, and gives a hundred pages to struc- 

 tural geology, leaving also a himdred for 

 the stratigraphical division. In the struc- 

 tural portion he gives most attention to 

 describing the minerals and rocks that 

 occur extensively in the earth's crust, and 



* Elementary Geology. By Ralph S. Tarr. 

 New York : The Macmillan Co. Pp. 499, 12mo. 

 Price, ^1.40. 



