LITERARY NOTICES. 



749 



over by a practical teacher of cookery. This 

 is a comparatively recent innovation, and 

 has only been adopted after a sharp strug- 

 gle." 



Of course no such measure could be 

 adopted except after severe struggle. 

 The time in schools and the ground in 

 education are all occupied, and new 

 subjects are resisted instinctively by 

 those in control of existing schools. 

 The London advocates of the cooking- 

 schools made a strong point by repre- 

 senting that, while the school board was 

 spending a great deal of money for or- 

 namental studies, the knowledge of the 

 arts and interests of common life was 

 dying out among young people. This 

 does not imply that these practical arts 

 have ever had a fair chance in the 

 schools, but that absorption in other 

 subjects stifles even the ordinary inter- 

 est that would be felt in more useful 

 studies. The difficulty in linking cook- 

 ing-schools on to the common schools 

 is, that the practice of cookery is not 

 regarded as education, and this is but 

 a part of the old notion that nothing 

 practical or manipulatory is properly 

 education. There was once the same 

 objection to considering practice in the 

 chemical laboratory as truly educational 

 work. That prejudice has been gotten 

 over now; but what is a kitchen but a 

 chemical and physical laboratory where 

 intelligence ought to be developed in 

 connection with practical processes ? 

 Culinary changes go according to law 

 as well as transformations of matter 

 anywhere else, and they just as much 

 require cultivated thought to guide 

 them. No doubt a brainless automaton 

 in a kitchen may by long practice and 

 mere imitation acquire a certain suc- 

 cessful facility in work, but this has 

 always been the case in all the arts. 

 Mind has come in play and the ad- 

 vancement of other arts to such an ex- 

 tent that to go back now to mere blind, 

 imitative practice would be almost to 

 abolish them. The art of preparing 

 food is still in the empirical condition, 

 and, what is worse, is generally aban- 



doned to a specially ignorant class. "We 

 have no sanguine hopes about the ren- 

 ovation of the kitchen by the better 

 teaching of the culinary art, but the 

 work is nevertheless thoroughly begun, 

 and is certainly to go steadily, though 

 perhaps slowly, onward. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES, 

 No. XXIV. 



A History of the Growth of the Steam- 

 Engine. By Robert H. Thurston, A. M., 

 C. E., Professor of Mechanical Engineer- 

 ing in the Stevens Institute of Technol- 

 ogy. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 

 Pp. 490. Price, $2.50. 



In the preparation of this work Prof. 

 Thurston has made an important contribu- 

 tion, alike to the excellent series of works 

 of which it will form a part, and to the his- 

 torical literature of the arts and sciences. 

 There was a niche for such a book, which 

 ought to have been filled before. We have 

 had many works on the steam-engine, from 

 elementary catechisms to ponderous trea- 

 tises, all of which have given more or less 

 attention to its origin ; but there was still 

 wanting a volume that should tell the enter- 

 taining story of the growth of this wonderful 

 machine in a way to interest the popular 

 mind without impairing the dignity or di- 

 minishing the instructiveness of the narra- 

 tive. Prof. Thurston may be congratulated 

 on having executed his task in a manner 

 not unworthy the remarkable interest of 

 the subject. 



And this, it must be confessed, is saying 

 a good deal, for the steam-engine is unique 

 and incomparable both in its present posi- 

 tion of commanding influence, and in the 

 romantic elements of its historical develop- 

 ment. It is now the most powerful agency 

 the world possesses for the improvement 

 and extension of civilization, and its noble 

 efficiency in this respect is but a measure 

 of the immense intellectual labor that has 

 been expended in producing it. It was not 

 struck out by the creative genius of any one 

 man, nor constructed by the combined in- 

 ventive effort of any one age, but it is a 

 product of centuries of mental exertion ; 

 and, looking back to its crude beginnings 



