LITERARY NOTICES. 



131 



gant assumptions. It conceives the ancient 

 ice sheet as formed thus : From many groups 

 of mountains there radiate glaciers wliich 

 meet and unite, but do not entirely lose their 

 individualities. Each may be traced in its 

 course by the nature of the stones which it 

 carries, and the furthest advance of each 

 will be marked by a terminal moraine. These 

 glaciers would frequently form lakes by 

 damming rivers, and the lakes would make 

 deposits which must be distinguished from 

 those dropped by the ice. The former he 

 calls bowlder clay and the latter till. Many 

 earlier theories and beliefs are vigorously 

 shaken up in these notes. In the freely ex- 

 pressed opinions jotted down, in its evidence 

 of the forming and abandonment or modifica- 

 tion and development of views, this volume 

 has a peculiar value that a finished treatise 

 would not have. The investigator who would 

 carry this subject forward should read the 

 posthumous contribution of Prof. Lewis care- 

 fully and often. 



Essays in Historical Chemistry. By T. E. 

 Thorpe, Sc. D., F. R. S. London and New 

 York: Macmillan&Co. Pp.381. Price, 



$2.25. 



In the dozen or so of lectures and ad- 

 dresses which Prof. Thorpe has gathered 

 into this volume he tells how most of the 

 great chemical discoveries of the past two 

 hundred and fifty years have been made, 

 and gives us an acquaintance with the per- 

 sonalities of the men who made them. The 

 lectures are arranged in historical sequence, 

 the first sketching the life and work of Rob. 

 ert Boyle, and the others dealing successively 

 with Priestley, Scheele, Cavendish, Lavoisier, 

 Faraday, Graham, Wohler, Dumas, Kopp, 

 and Mendeleeff. In this volume we may 

 read how oxygen and the composition of 

 water were discovered, and what were the re- 

 spective shares of Priestley, Cavendish, and 

 Lavoisier in these discoveries ; how Wohler 

 broke down the barrier between organic and 

 inorganic chemistry, and how the wonderful 

 Russian, Mendeleeff, evolved the periodic 

 arrangement of the elements. We may, 

 moreover, learn also that Cavendish was in- 

 tensely shy, a hater of noise and bustle, and 

 had a house made up of laboratories and 

 workshops, very little of it being set apart 

 for personal comfort ; that when young Fara- 



day was traveling on the Continent as aman- 

 uensis to Sir Humphry Davy he wrote of 

 Lady Davy, " Her temper makes it oftentimes 

 go wrong with me, with herself, and with 

 Sir Humphry," and similar interesting facts 

 about the other men included in the volume. 

 The lectures have been delivered as occasion 

 has called them forth, to a variety of audi- 

 ences, and the author is far from claiming 

 that they constitute a history of the time 

 from Boyle to the present day. 



An Introduction to the Study of Society. 

 By Albion W. Small, Ph. D., and George 

 E. Vincent. American Book Company. 

 Pp. 384. Price, $1.80. 



The inquiry for a syllabus of sociological 

 method printed in 1889 by one of the au- 

 thors of this manual furnished surprising 

 evidence of demand for scientific exposition 

 of social relations. The interest in philosoph- 

 ical sociology has continued to increase in 

 this country. Since the organization of the 

 Department of Sociology in the University of 

 Chicago applications for information about a 

 suitable text-book of the subject have been 

 incessant. No such text-book existing, this 

 manual has been prepared as a guide to the 

 elementary study. It does not presume to 

 be a contribution to sociological knowledge 

 or a report of research on the material of 

 social knowledge, but a help in the training 

 of beginners, the proposal of a method of 

 preliminary investigation, a "laboratory 

 guide " ; the outgrowth of experience in 

 teaching sociology under difficulties. It aims 

 to commend a method that shall emphasize 

 the necessity of precise knowledge of social 

 facts, and shall confirm students in the habit 

 of widening their comprehension of particu- 

 lars by relating them to the containing con- 

 ditions. The first book, on the Origin and 

 Scope of Sociology, starts with the begin- 

 nings of the science, and goes on to treat of 

 its development, its relation to the special 

 social sciences and to social reforms, and of 

 the organic conception of sociology. The 

 second book, on the Natural History of a 

 Society, takes the family, composed of the 

 man and his newly married wife going to 

 open a farm and settle on the native, solitary 

 prairie, and traces the gradual growth of the 

 community through the increase of the family, 

 the accession of new settlers, the beginning of 



