502 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



laying down courses of study, general and 

 special. This is the constructive part, which 

 is ever the most difficult and liable to criti- 

 cism, because of its conflict with preexist- 

 ing habits ; but there can be no doubt that 

 this portion of his volume involves a marked 

 advance on previous practice. We have 

 seen no popular scheme of study in which 

 Nature is so confessedly the groundwork 

 on which the whole fabric of mental culti- 

 vation is to rest, and in which science is so 

 intimately interwoven with the constant 

 course of school-work. Hitherto, scientific 

 studies have been too much looked upon as 

 secondary, intrusive, and to be superinduced 

 upon a preestablished scheme ; they are here 

 made the starting-point, and incorporated in 

 the plan of studies as an essential and fun- 

 damental element. In thus contributing to 

 the better organization of school exercises, 

 this book meets an urgent need of the times 

 which cannot fail to be appreciated by many 

 teachers. 



The PsYcno-PHTSiOLOGiCAL Sciences and 

 their Assailants : Being a Response by 

 Alfred R. Wallace, of England; Prof. 

 J. R. Buchanan, of New York ; Darius 

 Lyman, of Washington ; Epes Sargent, 

 of Boston, to the Attacks of Prof. W. 

 B. Carpenter, of England, and Others. 

 Boston : Colby & Rich. Pp. 216. 



This is the counterblast of the spiritu- 

 alists against the lectures of Dr. Carpenter 

 on spiritualism, mesmerism, etc. For three 

 hundred years the devotees of scientific 

 knowledge have been laboring to disen- 

 tangle the natural from the supernatural, 

 which had previously been so mixed up in 

 the traditions of learning that "Nature," as 

 a system of uniform and verifiable laws, 

 was unknown. The progress of science has, 

 in fact, consisted simply in tracing out and 

 giving expression to these regularities and 

 uniformities of the natural world. The spir- 

 itualists go back on all this, and declare it 

 to be a false process and a spurious prog- 

 ress. They claim that the supernatural is 

 to be included in the natural, and aver that 

 they can investigate it and work out its laws 

 so that they shall be a part of proper and 

 legitimate science. They maintain, indeed, 

 that they have already done this ; but the 

 difficulty is, that the whole scientific world 

 denies it. Nor is there the slightest pros- 



pect that they will be able to convince sci- 

 entific men of the validity of their claims 

 on the basis of anything as yet accom- 

 plished. What they may do in the future 

 we shall not presume to say ; but we think 

 they will have to be content to go on work- 

 ing out such results as they find possible, 

 and trusting to time for that recognition 

 which they so vehemently demand shall be 

 accorded to them now. They make much 

 complaint of the inhospitality of the scien- 

 tific mind to what they call new truth, and 

 this complaint we consider as wholly ground- 

 less. Prejudices, no doubt, arise from in- 

 tense preoccupation in special lines of sci- 

 entific labor, so that the physicist, for ex- 

 ample, fails in appreciation of the biologist, 

 while the chemist is indifferent to the work 

 of the sociologist ; yet in these diverse and 

 widely-separated departments there is still 

 sufficient liberality of spirit to leave all in- 

 vestigators unmolested in their special work. 

 Why should the spiritualists wax wroth and 

 imprecate Science and scientific men, be- 

 cause they will not drop their own research- 

 es and come over to help exploit the won- 

 ders of the preternatural sphere ? If they 

 cannot appreciate such marvelous things, 

 why not leave them with due commiseration 

 to wriggle and squirm in their congenial 

 materialistic mud ? Let the spiritualists go 

 on and get out something worthy of atten- 

 tion, and it will be sure to get attention in 

 due time. 



The Native Flowers and Ferns of the 

 United States, in their Botanical, 

 Horticultural, and Popular Aspects. 

 By Thomas Meehan, Professor of Vege- 

 table Physiology to the Pennsylvania 

 State Board of Agriculture, Editor of 

 the Gardener's Monthly, etc. Illustrated 

 by Chromo-lithographs. Boston: L. 

 Prang & Co. Pp. 16. Fifty cents per 

 number. 



Botanical works with good colored il- 

 lustrations have hitherto been far too ex- 

 pensive for general use ; but the perfection 

 now attained in the art of chromo-lithog- 

 raphy makes possible a new departure in 

 pictorial botany. The series now projected, 

 the first two numbers of which are be- 

 fore us, show that a very considerable de- 

 gree of fidelity and naturalness in the repre- 

 sentation of flowers is already secured by 

 the chromo-lithographic process, and we 



