BOOK NOTES 



Elementary Agriculture. A complaint is often heard that the current 

 texts are so general as to lack force in a given locality where specific agri- 

 cultural industries are prominent. The recent text bv Ferguson and 

 Lewis (Ferguson Pub. Co., Sherman, Texas) is avowedly written for the 

 Southwest, and the most casual examination leaves no doubt on this point. 

 The best and most vital, in the sense of being most related to the environ- 

 ment, that there is in physiography, botany, and zoology, are here brought 

 together, and the reader is not permitted to forget that it is real science, 

 and not nature -study. Herein lies the merit or weakness of the work ac- 

 cording to the use made of it. The theory of variation and crossing is 

 thoroughly but plainly treated, but not apart from its application. For 

 that matter hardly a page lacks evidence of the direct bearing of the facts 

 of the sciences on agriculture. One almost wonders why some expansion 

 of the work here outlined would not allow it profitably to supplant any 

 formal presentation of one or two of the usual high-school sciences. The 

 treatment of subject-matter is less uneven than in many texts. Most of it 

 is more difficult than some parts of other texts, and none of it quite so 

 difficult as some parts of most texts written ostensibly for the grades. 

 There is too much taking for granted of chemical knowledge which not two 

 children in a county possess. Most of the plant physiology is within the 

 grasp of seventh-and eighth-grade children, but much of the morphology is 

 hopelessly beyond them. The lack of laboratory directions would be 

 amply supplied by Bulletins 186, and 195, of the Office of Experiment 

 Stations, Department of Agriculture. The text is one of the best yet 

 written for children of first year high school age. Much of it involves 

 knowledge which even teachers of the rural common schools do not have. 



Montclair, X. J., Normal School C. H. Robison. 



American Birds. By William L. Finley. Xew York : Scribners. igo;. 

 $1.50. 



This book is a series of studies with note-book and camera of the life- 

 history of about twenty-five common birds. It is not a reference book, 

 but simply a collection of readable essays, illustrated by a large number of 

 good photographs from life. 



Romance of the Reaper. By Herbert X. Casson. Xew York: Double- 

 day, Page. iqo8. $1.00. 



The story of the invention and manufacture of harvesting machines. 

 Reads like an Arabian Xight's tale, and deserves to be required reading in 

 every class in agriculture. 



Indiana Arbor and Bird Day Annual. This excellent pamphlet from the 

 office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction is especially 

 interesting because more than twenty pages were contributed by the pupils 

 of the School for Feeble-Minded Youth at Fort Wayne. Principal 

 Cyrus D. Mead of the school is an enthusiastic believer in nature-study and 

 its correlations. 



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