;62 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Huxley, Burne-Jones, Bryce, Fitz- 

 james Stephen, Goschen, Sir John 

 Hooker, England ; Nordenskiold, 

 Sweden ; Vogt, Switzerland ; Vir- 

 chow, Roscher, Germany ; Lanciani, 

 Rome; Jacoby, Austria, etc. 



The Institute of France is not as 

 important an organization as it was 

 fifty years ago, but it is still influen- 

 tial through its elections, which are 

 regarded as acknowledgment of sci- 

 entific merit, and the prizes it annu- 

 ally awards for original research, dis- 

 coveries, and inventions. It main- 

 tains its authority not upon its pres- 

 tige in the past, but upon the fact that 

 it always enrolls among its members 



the most distinguished scientists and 

 writers of France, and such citizens 

 of other countries as have in its 

 judgment done great and original 

 work in any department of human 

 knowledge. In the opinion of one 

 of its most distinguished living mem- 

 bers, M. Berthelot, the noted French 

 chemist, and present (1895) French 

 Minister of Foreign Affairs, the 

 Academy of Sciences, " if it no longer 

 has the initiative of discoveries, it 

 at least constitutes a dike against 

 charlatanism, and aids in giving 

 the widest publicity to the acbieve- 

 ments of French and foreign sa- 

 vants.'''' 



Jicittttifijc %X\txxd\xxt. 



<;^' 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



The world is always conscious of an addition to its intellectual wealth 

 when a leader in original scientific work writes a book. Men like to hear 

 from the masters, especially when they speak, as Prof. Young does, a lan- 

 guage that inspires while it instructs.* When the first edition of this 

 uniquely interesting book was put forth in 1881 a warm welcome awaited 

 it, not only from astronomers who were eager to learn what one of the 

 foremost investigators of solar phenomena had to say about the sun, but 

 from all readers who take pleasure in seeing the literary powers of our 

 mother tongue turned to useful account in the presentation of the facts of 

 science. And the welcome grew as the circle of the book's readers rapidly 

 widened. No volume of the International Scientific Series has proved more 

 continuously po^Jular. 



But the fourteen years that have elapsed since the first appearance of 

 Prof. Young's book have witnessed remarkable advances in astronomy, 

 and particularly with regard to our knowledge of the sun. For a time it 

 was possible to keep the book up to date by notes and appendices to its suc- 

 cessive editions. At length this method of revision no longer sufficed, and 

 the author undertook a thorough rehandling of the work, involving the re- 

 writing of considerable portions, and the addition in the text of much that 

 was needed " to make the book fairly representative of the solar science of 

 to-day." That in its revised form it now answers the above definition, 

 quoted from the author's new preface, no one who knows Prof. Young's 

 habitual caution and precision of statement will doubt. 



No authoritative utterance concerning a progressive branch of science 



The Sun. By Charles A. Yonng, Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of Astronomy in Princeton University. 

 New and revised edition. Pp. 363, 12mo. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $2. 



