LITERARY NOTICES. 



277 



plunged into so crude and futile an experi- 

 ment as that at Brook Farm. Of course, it 

 was a generous and noble, an heroic and 

 a chivalric endeavor, and creditable to the 

 hearts of those who turned their backs up- 

 on a selfish and sordid civilization to achieve 

 a more harmonious and elevated life ; but 

 it was discreditable to their heads that they 

 had not the intelligence to know that it 

 must end just where it did end in hopeless 

 failure. Brook Farm collapsed because it 

 was a project of impracticables whose edu- 

 cation had been classical instead of scien- 

 tific. 



With the failure of Brook Farm Mr. 

 Ripley took to the vocation of literature. 

 Tired of making the world over, he resolved 

 to accept it as it is, and make the most of it. 

 His success was small at first, but he was 

 an excellent critic, a fine writer, and an in- 

 defatigable worker, and these qualities were 

 sure to win success. His career as a jour- 

 nalist and editor is fully and admirably de- 

 scribed by Mr. Frothingham, and is very 

 interesting ; but it would be easy to show 

 that the lack of the scientific element in his 

 culture was as much a drawback in his later 

 labors as in those that preceded them. 



The New Botany. A Lecture on the Best 

 Method of teaching the Science. By 

 W. J. Beal, M. Sc, Ph. D. Second edi- 

 tion, revised. Philadelphia : C. H. Ma- 

 rot. 1882. Pp. 16. Price, 25 cents. 



There is no class of persons who need 

 teaching more than teachers. There are a 

 few born educators whose native instinct, 

 if not perverted by bad teaching, prompts 

 them to pursue natural and rational meth- 

 ods for teaching others, but the average 

 teacher teaches as he himself was taught, 

 so that bad methods are propagated and 

 spread indefinitely. The author of the 

 pamphlet before us draws an interesting and 

 life-like picture of the old way of teaching 

 botany, in which the sole end and aim was 

 to memorize the parts of the plant, and 

 then learn its name by the aid of an artifi- 

 cial key, thus obtaining a most formal intro- 

 duction to the stranger. 



The new botany began to appear in this 

 country in 1862, and includes a study of the 

 subjects as set forth by Darwin, Sachs, Lub- 

 bock, Bessey, and others. It studies objects 

 before books, and sets the pupil to thinking, 



investigating, and experimenting for him- 

 self. Teaching the new botany properly 

 " is simply giving the thirsty a chance to 

 drink." It also creates a thirst which the 

 study gratifies, but never entirely satisfies. 

 For young pupils object-lessons are very 

 popular for a while, but in most cases the 

 interest soon wears away ; there is too much 

 pouring in, and too little worked out by the 

 pupil. They bring forth the combined in- 

 formation of all members of a class, but 

 add little or nothing by way of research. 

 To be really appreciated, a student should 

 earn his facts in the study of biology. The 

 author says : " In the whole course in bot- 

 any I keep constantly in view how best to 

 prepare students to acquire information for 

 themselves with readiness and accuracy. 

 This is a training for power, and is of far 

 more value than the mere information ac- 

 quired during a course of study in natural 

 science." 



The difficulty in the way of teaching the 

 new botany is a serious, almost a fatal one, 

 namely, it requires an actual knowledge of 

 the subject on the part of the teacher ; it 

 can not be taught, like history and geogra- 

 phy, by text-books; and, in addition, the 

 teacher must have tact as well as knowl- 

 edge. We have not yet reached the millen- 

 nium of education, when each science shall 

 be taught only by its true disciples and in- 

 vestigators. 



Is Consumption contagious ? And can it 

 be transmitted by Means of Food ? 

 By Herbert C. Clapp, A. M., M. D. 

 Second edition. Boston : Otis Clapp & 

 Son. 1882. Pp. 187. Price, 15 cents. 



That a second edition of such a book 

 should be called for within two years after 

 its first appearance is sufficient proof of the 

 interest felt in the subject by the people as 

 well as the profession. The author does 

 not set out to prove that consumption is 

 contagious, but presents the arguments ad- 

 vanced on both sides, with such an array of 

 cases that the reader feels almost convinced 

 that it must be either infectious or conta- 

 gious. Koch's discovery, which has been 

 made since the first edition, is referred to 

 in the new preface and described in the ap- 

 pendix. That this discovery has an impor- 

 tant bearing on the question propounded 

 by Dr. Clapp is evident, and in general is 



