LITERARY NOTICES. 



625 



urges, should be retrenched in the gym- 

 nasia, and greater attention given to 

 mathematics and the physical sciences. 

 This conflict, therefore, belongs to no 

 nation, but is as broad as the inter- 

 ests of science and the course of civili- 

 zation itself. 



Peof. William Monroe Davis, of 

 Cleveland, Ohio, died on the 21st of July, 

 at the age of seventy years. He was born 

 in New Hampshire, and his ancestry on 

 the father's side went back to the Pil- 

 grims of the Mayflower, while on the 

 mother's side he was closely related to 

 the family of President Monroe. He 

 went to Cincinnati in his boyhood, and 

 grew up there with but a limited edu- 

 cation. It was only when married and 

 having children to be trained that he 

 first began the study of science; but 

 such was his native genius that he 

 soon mastered a position as an original 

 thinker and investigator in astronomy. 

 The distinction he had won could not 

 be better shown than by the fact that, 

 when Prof. Mitchell abandoned science 

 and took to the vocation of war, Mr. 

 Davis was called to succeed him as di- 

 rector in the Cincinnati Observatory, a 

 position which he filled with satisfac- 

 tion and credit. His health failing five 

 years ago, he came to Cleveland to re- 

 side with his son-in-law, Mr. A. J. Rick- 

 off, the eminent educationist of Ohio. 

 He constructed a very valuable tele- 

 scope, the lenses of which were ground 

 by his own hands. He published in the 

 July number of The Popular Science 

 Monthly a paper containing an able 

 and profound discussion of the nebular 

 hypothesis and the phenomena of plan- 

 etary rings and satellites, the immediate 

 occasion of the article being the recent 

 discovery and apparently anomalous 

 motions of the moons of Mars. Prof. 

 Davis had worked out his own views 

 on these recondite questions, and ex- 

 pected to develop them in a series of 

 essays for the Monthly, when his work 

 VOL. xiii. 40 



was arrested by death. It is to be 

 hoped that his manuscript notes may 

 have been sufficiently full to make it 

 practicable and desirable for his friends 

 to print them in a collected form. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Lessons in Cookery: Hand-Book of the 

 National Training-School for Cook- 

 ery (South Kensington, London). To 

 which is added The Principles of Diet 

 in Health and Disease, by Thomas K. 

 Chambers, M. D. Edited by Eliza A. 

 Youmans. New York : D. Appleton & 

 Co. Pp. 382. Price, $1.50. 



Two thiDgs closely connected are much 

 and justly complained of in this country 

 the everlasting multiplication of new cook- 

 books and the general badness of cookery. 

 Publications of every form and variety 

 abound upon this subject, with no corre- 

 sponding improvement in the art by whieh 

 food is prepared. It would be going too 

 far to ascribe the low state of our culinary 

 practice to the qualities of the literature 

 that deals with it, for in many cases cook- 

 books have no influence at all upon kitchen 

 operations; but it is equally certain that 

 the current manuals do much to perpetuate 

 the bad methods to which they are con- 

 formed. The reason of their failure to ef- 

 fect much improvement is obvious enough, 

 for our popular manuals of cookery make 

 no provision for learning the business in the 

 way all other arts have to be learned if 

 they are to be successfully prosecuted. 

 They proceed upon the false principle that 

 a practical vocation, depending upon a 

 knowledge of the properties of numerous 

 substances, involving constant manipulation 

 and the production of delicate and compli- 

 cated effects, can be learned by simply 

 reading about it. This mischievous error, 

 however, is beginning to be recognized in 

 various quarters, and it is seen that cook- 

 ery, like all other subjects, must be studied 

 in a rational way, in accordance with the 

 nature of the subject. England has the 

 honor of taking the lead in a vigorous 

 movement to make the art of practical 

 cookery a branch of common education. 

 The effort has been successful in so emi- 

 nent a degree that it promises to be perma- 



