SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



703 



that unlike magnetic poles mutually attract, he invented several forms of 

 compass, including the first which could be constantly used to steer by as 

 the modern mariner's compass is used, and he proposed the first magnetic 

 (electric) motor. Columbus figures in Mr. Benjamin's history as discover- 

 ing the line of no variation of the compass needle. After him comes Hart- 

 mann, who discovered the dip of the needle, then Sarpi, whom Galileo 

 addresses as " my father and my master," Porta. Cardano, and other learned 

 Italian physicians of the sixteenth century. These men prepared the way 

 for the important advances made by Queen Elizabeth's physician William 

 Gilbert, who is I'ightly regarded as the founder of the science of electricity, 

 even if Francis Bacon could never appreciate his talents. The young 

 science was fostered by Galileo and Descartes and von Guericke and the 

 Abbe Nollet on the Continent, by Newton and Boyle and Hauksbee in 

 England. Other men, also, less known to fame, were at work upon electrical 

 problems during the same period. Gilbert's discoveries did not fail to raise 

 up a swarm of charlatans, among whom Van Helmont and Kenelm Digby 

 stand forth prominently. The history stops with Franklin's demonstration 

 that lightning and electricity are identical. This, says Mr. Benjamin, 

 "brings to culmination the long series of events whereby the single incom- 

 prehensible effect observed in the lodestone and the amber gradually grew 

 into recognition as a world force, subject to universal law and pervading 

 all Nature." The volume is tasteful as to its mechanical features, and is 

 embellished by reproductions of many of the portraits and quaint engrav- 

 ings in the early books from which its material has been drawn. 



Those who are desirous of improving the environment of the poor may 

 obtain valuable guidance from the eighth special report of the United 

 States Commissioner of Labor.* As would be expected, the greater part of 

 the report is devoted to model dwellings, other matters receiving some con- 

 sideration in the fore part of the volume. Dr. Gould tells what is being 

 done to secure better housing for the poor in New York, the chief cities of 

 Great Britain, and more briefly in western Europe, through building and 

 sanitary laws, and municipal condemnation of insanitary houses. Sanitary 

 aid societies have greatly furthered this end by co-operating with or spurring 

 on the public authorities in their work. A form of private effort that has 

 done much good is the rent-collecting agency of Miss Octavia Hill, in Lon- 

 don. The method pursued by her and the assistants whom she has trained 

 is both businesslike and philanthropic. She buys tenement houses with 

 capital furnished by those interested in her work, and undertakes the col- 

 lection of rents or the whole management of buildings for others, at fixed 

 rates. She rewards prompt payments and proper use of the premises by 

 making repairs and improvements in the huildings. The incorrigible are 

 turned out, but by the use of tact the number of these is kept very small. 

 The moral influence of her system has been to admit women to a greater 

 extent into the management of housing companies. In his account of 

 model buildings Dr. Gould takes up successively " block buildings " or flats, 

 small houses, and lodging houses. He describes model block buildings in 

 Brooklyn, New York, and Boston, and in large cities of Great Britain, 



* The Housing of the Working People. Prepared under the Direction of Carroll D. Wright, Com- 

 missioner of Lahor, by E. K. L. Gould, Ph. D. Pp. 461, 8vo. Washington. 



