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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



machine education, and supplements that 

 book by pointing out the features that 

 should be secured in the school of the future. 

 The author's suggestions are illustrated by 

 accounts of lessons actually given in some 

 exceptionally fortunate schools of the pres- 

 ent day. Among the chief changes urged by 

 Miss Kenyon are that political boards of 

 education shall give way to professional 

 boards ; that minute regulation shall be ban- 

 ished from the schools ; and that the best 

 teachers shall be assigned to the work of 

 primary teaching, which is the foundation 

 underlying all higher education. 



The twenty-first " Summer Number " of 

 The School Journal (New York) gives evi- 

 dence of vigorous life in that publication. 

 Its contents includes articles on a wide range 

 of educational subjects, and the number is 

 illustrated with portraits of prominent edu- 

 cators, plans of school buildings, and dia- 

 grams for drawing, writing, and other les- 

 sons. 



The series of Picturesque Geographical 

 Readers (Lee k Shepard, Boston) has been 

 projected by Mr. Charles F. King, to make 

 the learning of geography a source of pleas- 

 ure as well as of real instruction. It aims 

 to present the important facts of the science 

 in a simple, interesting narrative style, so as 

 to make the relation attractive. The books 

 are intended to be used with the regular 

 geography or atlas, and not in place of 

 them ; with the large and fuller maps of the 

 text-books opened upon the pupils' desks, 

 and the wall maps hung up, to be freely 

 consulted as the lessons are read. It is ad- 

 vised also that the pupils be encouraged to 

 write stories in connection with the pictures 

 found in the book, to give oral abstracts of 

 the lessons read, to name the pictures seen, 

 to write the best single word to suggest the 

 story in the chapter, and to draw and make 

 as many of the illustrations as they can. 

 The present volume is the second book of 

 the series, and relates to this continent of 

 ours. In it are given, in dialogue form, de- 

 scriptions of the principal physical features 

 of North America, including the frozon re- 

 gion, whaling, the land and water masses, 

 the mountains, the Yellowstone Park and its 

 geysers, central plain and eastern highlands, 

 the rivers, climate and lakes, with special 

 chapters on a few minor features ; then an 



account on a similar plan of the Dominion of 

 Canada ; whence the reader is jumped, pass- 

 ing a special description of the United 

 States, to like descriptions of Mexico and the 

 West Indies. 



A paper on the Evolution of the Ordi- 

 nance of 1787, toith an Account of the Earlier 

 Plans for the Government of the Northwest 

 Territory (G. P. Putnam's Sons), by Jay A. 

 Barrett, is the first of a new academic series 

 of papers, to be called the Seminary Series, 

 which is started in connection with the De- 

 partments of History and Economics of the 

 University of Nebraska. The institution of 

 these series, in which historical, political, and 

 economical questions are discussed in care- 

 fully studied monographs, is regarded in an 

 editorial note as a sign that American uni- 

 versities are at last becoming centers of or- 

 ganized literary work. It affords a means 

 also by which students may do useful work, 

 make considerable additions to knowledge, 

 and do the State a service. In the belief 

 that a division of the labor is expedient, the 

 Seminary Series, while not excluding other 

 topics, will deal mainly with questions re- 

 lating to Western history and economics. 

 The Evolution of the Ordinance of 17S7 is a 

 good beginning. 



In a book on the Origin, Purpose, and Des- 

 tiny of Man, of which Mr. William Thornton, 

 of Boston, is the author and publisher, the 

 doctrine is unfolded that all things are made 

 up of three states, which are called the three 

 ethers. Life is the first ether, which is a 

 continuous aggregate. The second ether is a 

 composition of the potentialities heat, light, 

 electricity, and magnetism, mechanical pow- 

 er being manifested during the activity of 

 these potentialities. The third ether is a 

 material nucleus which permits of the action 

 of the other two ethers. All bodies mani- 

 festing the second and third ethers inde- 

 pendently of the first make up inorganic 

 bodies. Organized bodies require all these 

 ethers. These two conditions constitute all 

 things natural and supernatural. The Cre- 

 ator is not to be found in the universe 

 in any morphological form, but has only 

 a subjective existence ; and it is only 

 when the subjective part of man exists 

 as a distinct entity that he can ever know 

 God. 



Two novels of considerable merit, and 



