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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



itself and never too long to be carried, with- 

 out risk of losing its balance, on a single 

 breath of the speaker. Mr. Stedman would 

 advise the literary aspirant that the first thing 

 is to have " something he must say or ex- 

 press, and then he will say it in his natural 

 and special way ; and his way forms his 

 style, and his style is thus the man." Mr. 

 R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone, 

 first makes sure what he means, then ar- 

 ranges the words in straight order without 

 waste, and then looks at them, with a stran- 

 ger's mind, to learn whether he would take 

 them as himself had done. Mr. Edward 

 Dowden regards as the most important thing, 

 in writing narrative, " to discover and then 

 conceal a rational order in the sequence of 

 topics." In many cases the " logic " would 

 be one of the emotions rather than of the 

 intellect. Mr. F. Marion Crawford advises 

 boys to cultivate style by taking pains about 

 their letters. Mr. Thomas Hardy's impres- 

 sion is that if one "has anything to say 

 which is of value, and words to say it with, 

 the style will come of itself." 



Semitic Philosophy : Showing the Ultimate 

 Social and Scientific Outcome of Original 

 Christianity in its Conflict with Surviv- 

 ing Ancient Heathenism. By Philip C. 

 Friese. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. 

 Pp. 246. 



The speculative theories of the Semites 

 are not discussed in this work, as might be 

 supposed from its title. It is named Semitic 

 to distinguish it from " the philosophies of 

 Greece and Rome and the Orient," and be- 

 cause the author of its great revival was a 

 Semite. "We learn that it is " the Christian 

 doctrine of the kingdom of God," and that 

 this formula implies a philosophy "all of 

 which may be grasped into the one first 

 principle as the uniformity of the uniformi- 

 ties of God's action." Christ did not intrust 

 this precious system to writing because lan- 

 guage is defective, but he " referred its keep- 

 ing" to a better vehicle of thought, "the 

 sensuous ideas." These are explained as 

 possessing magnitude, color, motion, and 

 relative place ; superior to the differentials 

 of mathematics, in that they are qualitative 

 as well as quantitative, and, to cap the cli- 

 max, they are " constructed, like the rest of 

 the body, by man's spirit " ! In spite of the 

 inefficiency of. language, Mr. Friese gives us 



"An Ideal Written Social Constitution," 

 and describes in another chapter a general 

 social reformation. Whether we agree or 

 not with his remedies and conclusions, he 

 fully persuades us that words are poor in- 

 struments, and a snare for the unwary. 



Monographs of the United States Geologi- 

 cal Survey. Volume XV. The Potomac 

 or Younger Mesozoic Flora. By Will- 

 iam Morris Fontaine. Part I, Text ; Part 

 II, Plates. Washington. Pp. 377, Plates 

 180. 



In his introduction the author states that 

 the formation whose flora he describes was 

 for a long time included in the so-called 

 Trias of the Atlantic slope. Prof. W. B. 

 Rogers, however, early recognized the differ- 

 ence between this group of strata and most 

 of the Mesozoic of Virginia. Nearly all the 

 plants described in this work were collected 

 by the author in Virginia ; the few others 

 were obtained from Maryland. The extent 

 of the ground that Prof. Fontaine has ex- 

 amined makes him confident that the fossils 

 herein described give a fair notion of the 

 flora of the "Potomac" period. He gives 

 the locations of the places in which plants 

 have been found, and describes the mode of 

 occurrence of the specimens. He describes 

 also the location and geology of the Potomac 

 beds. The botanical descriptions of the spe- 

 cies to the number of three hundred and sixty- 

 five occupy the greater portion of the volume 

 of text. A series of tables, comparing the 

 Potomac plants with previously described 

 fossil floras, are appended by permission of 

 Prof. Lester F. Ward, by whom they were 

 prepared, for his own use. 



Bulletins of the United States Geological 

 Survey. Xos. 5-i, 55, 56, and 57. Wash- 

 ington. 



The first of these four bulletins is a vol- 

 ume of over three hundred pages by Carl 

 Barus, entitled On the Thermo-electric Meas- 

 urement of High Temperatures. In the in- 

 troduction a general account of methods of 

 pyrometry is given. The first chapter deals 

 with the degree of constant high tempera- 

 ture attained in metallic vapor baths of 

 large dimensions. The calibration of elec- 

 trical pyrometers, by the aid of fixed ther- 

 mal data and by direct comparison with the 

 air thermometer, is fully described. A chap- 



