POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



713 



Laramie Group. Washington : Government Print- 

 ing-Office. Pp. 160, with Thirty-five Plates. 



Rutgers Scientific School, New Brunswick, N. J. 

 Twenty-second Annual Report, for 18S6. Pp. 84. 



Hermann, Gustav. The Graphical Statics of 

 Mechanism. New York : D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 

 153, with Plates. 



Barrows, Charles M. Facts and Fictions of 

 Mental Healing. Boston : H. H. Carter & Karrick. 

 Pp. 248. 



Spencer, Theodore C. The Struggle for Re- 

 ligious and Political Liberty. New York: The 

 Truth-Seeker Company. Pp. 140. 75 cents. 



Maverick National Bank Manual, July 1, 18S7. 

 Boston : Wright & Potter Printing Company. Pp. 

 200. 



Board of Education, City of New York. Forty- 

 fifth Annual Report. Pp. 271. 



Atkinson, Edward. The Margin of Profits, how 

 it is now divided, etc. New York: G. P. Put- 

 nam's Sons. Pp. 123. Paper, 40 cents; bound, 75 

 cents. 



Johonnot, James. Ten Great Events in History. 

 New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 264. 63 cents. 



Home Sanitation. A Manual for Housekeepers. 

 Boston : Ticknor & Co. Pp. 80. 



Gilman, Arthur. Gilman's Historical Readers. 

 No. 1. The Discoverv and Exploration of America, 

 Pp. 128. 36 cents. *No. 2. The Colonization of 

 America. Pp. 161). 43 cen*s. No. 3. The Making 

 of the American Nation. Pp.192. 60 cents. Chi- 

 cago : Interstate Publishing Company. 



Bancroft Hubert Howe. History of the Pacific 

 States of North America, Vol. XXXI. Popular 

 Tribunals, Vol. I. San Francisco: The History 

 Company. Pp. 749. $5. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



Natural History Studies in Boston. 



The reports of the Museum, as given in the 

 " Proceedings " of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History, indicate that considerable 

 progress is being made in the cultivation of 

 a public interest in the objects of the soci- 

 ety. The purposes of the " Teachers' School 

 of Science " were greatly aided by the lib- 

 eral action of the trustee of the Lowell fund 

 in defraying the expense of the lessons and 

 in granting the use of Huntington Hall, and 

 by the kindness of the volunteer agents in 

 distributing and receiving applications and 

 tickets. The superintendent of the public 

 schools also aided the work, and took no- 

 tice of it in his report. Fifteen lessons 

 were given during the winter of 1883-'84, 

 including five on the " Elements of Chemis- 

 try," by Professor Lewis M. Norton ; five 

 on "Vegetable Physiology," by Professor 

 George I. Goodale ; and five on " Chemical 

 Principles illustrated by Common Miner- 

 als," by Professor W. O. Crosby ; to all of 

 which 2,*798 tickets were given out, 2,295 

 of them to teachers. In the season of 

 1S84-'S5, ten lessons in zoology were given 



by the curator, mainly on a range of sub- 

 jects specially indicated by the courses of 

 instruction of the schools of Boston, for 

 which 837 tickets were distributed. These 

 were succeeded by a course of ten labora- 

 tory lessons in "Elementary Mineralogy," 

 by Professor W. O. Crosby, which were at- 

 tended by seventy-five persons, occupying 

 the full capacity of the room. The Annis- 

 quam Laboratory has proved more useful, 

 and its instruction has been more highly 

 appreciated, than had been anticipated, and 

 " a very decided revival in the number and 

 quality of the attendance " is mentioned. 

 Reliance is placed on the study of natural 

 science in the public schools and in the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 

 assistance in keeping up the interest in this 

 enterprise. In arranging the plan of the 

 school, the director assumed that all per- 

 sons admitted would be capable of conduct- 

 ing their own work, whereas they very rare- 

 ly proved to be so ; and that all the students 

 would be able to realize that being taught 

 how to do one's own work was more valu- 

 able than the mere information gained. As 

 a rule, the ablest students acknowledged the 

 benefit of the mode of work, and, after a 

 short experience, expressed great satisfac- 

 tion and gratitude. 



Aztec Ikonographic Writing. Ikono- 

 matic is a term which Dr. Brinton applies, 

 in distinction from ikonographic and alpha- 

 betic, to a kind of rebus-writing, in which a 

 figure or picture refers to the name of an 

 object, the sound of which is applied to the 

 name of some other object or idea. It is 

 exemplified in certain of the hieroglyphic 

 inscriptions of Egypt, and in some of the 

 heraldic devices of the middle ages. It 

 was freely used in the ancient Mexican 

 inscriptions, in which the suggestion of the 

 figure itself, the relative position of the 

 objects, and the colors used, all may have 

 had, and evidently often did have, pho- 

 netic significance. The Aztec writing also 

 contained determinatives, such in principle 

 as arc frequent in the Egyptian inscriptions, 

 and numerous ideograms. Sometimes the 

 ideogram was associated with the phonetic 

 symbol, and acted as a sort of determina- 

 tive to it. Besides employing it in proper 

 names, the Aztecs composed in the ikono- 



