LITERARY NOTES 



141 



A Beginner's Star-Book. By Kelvin Mc- 

 Kready. With Charts of the Moon, 

 Tables of the Planets, and Star Maps 

 on a New Plan. New York: G. P. Put- 

 nam's Sons. 



This is one of the best, if not the best, 

 popular book pertaining to the heavens that 

 has come to my attention. It is of novel ar- 

 rangement and gives the information one 

 desires in attractive and convenient form. 



The Biology of The Seasons. By J. Arthur 

 Thomson, M. A. Illustrated by William 

 Smith. New York : Henry Holt and 

 Company. 

 This book presents the gist of the seasonal 

 drama, without going too minutely into the 

 details of the successive scenes. It is a 

 biology and not a naturalist's year-book. It 

 is most admirably adapted for all who en- 

 joy the pageant of the year and the drama 

 of the seasons. 



Butterfly and Moll! Book. By Ellen Robert- 

 son-Miller. With illustrations from 

 drawings by the author and photographs 

 by J. Lyonel King, G. A. Bash, Dr. F. D. 

 Snyder and others. New York: Charles 

 Scribner's Sons. 

 Here is a nature study book that shows 

 original work. The illustrations are not bor- 

 rowed from a variety of antiquated sources, 

 but for the most part are original. The text 

 is enthusiastic and interesting. 



General Science. By Bertha M. Clark, Ph. D., 

 Head of the Science Department, Wil- 

 liam Penn High School for Girls, Phila- 

 delphia. New York: American Book Com- 

 pany. 

 This course in general science, which was 

 successfully developed by the author for use 

 in her classes, is suited both for the general 

 reader and the pupil in the high school. 

 While it deals with physics, chemistry and 

 hygiene, the controlling idea has been to 

 make the presentation as informal and un- 

 technical as possible. 



The Rolling Earth. Outdoor Scenes and 

 Thoughts from the Writings of Walt 

 Whitman. Compiled by Waldo R. 

 Browne. Boston, Massachusetts. Hough- 

 ton Mifflin Company. 



Whitman was preeminently a rough and 

 rugged man, but a tender poet of outdoor 

 life. He says: 



"I restore my book to the bracing and 

 buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Na- 

 ture, the only permanent reliance for sanity 

 of book or human life." 



The compiler has included some of his 

 best work in prose as well as in verse, 

 though even his prose is really poetry. 

 "A song of the rolling earth, and of 



' words according, 

 Were you thinking that those were the 

 words, those upright lines? those 

 curves, angles, dots? 

 No, those are not the words, the sub- 

 stantial words are in the ground 

 and sea, 

 They are in the air, they are in you." 



Physiology of Man and Other Animals. By 



Anne Moore, A. B., A. M., Ph. D. New 



York: Henry Holt and Company. 



This is a successful attempt to correlate 



the laws of human physiology with the laws 



of other sciences. The material is put in 



admirable form as a class text-book. 



Moths of The Limbeiiost. By Gene Stratton- 

 Porter. New York: Doubleday, Page & 

 Company. 

 This is a beautifully illustrated book on 

 he;ny coated paper. It is popularly written 

 and also contains much valuable definite in- 

 formation not given in the regular manuals 

 of moths. 



Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. By Charles 

 Benedict Davenport. New York: Henry 

 Holt and Company. 



This quotation from the first chapter 

 very nicely expresses the spirit and scope of 

 the book: 



"It is a reproach to our intelligence that 

 we as a people, proud in other respects of 

 our control of nature, should have to sup- 

 port about half a million insane, feeble- 

 minded, epileptic, blind and deaf, 80,000 

 prisoners and 100,000 paupers at a cost of 

 over 100 millions dollars per year. A new 

 plague that rendered four per cent of our 

 population, chiefly at the most productive 

 age, not merely incompetent but a burden 

 costing 100 million dollars yearly to sup- 

 port, would instantly attract universal at- 

 tention. But we have become so used to 

 crime, disease and degeneracy that we take 

 them as necessary evils. That they were 

 so in the world's ignorance is granted; that 

 they must remain so is denied. 



"The general program of the eugenist is 

 clear — it is to improve the race by inducing 

 young people to make a more reasonable 

 selection of marriage mates; to fall in love 

 intelligently. It also includes the control by 

 the state of the propagation of the mentally 

 incompetent. It does not imply destruction 

 of the unfit either before or after birth. It 

 certainly has only disgust for the free love 

 propaganda that some ill-balanced persons 

 have sought to attach to the name. Rather 

 it trusts to that good sense with which the 

 majority of people are possessed and believes 

 that in the life of such there comes a time 

 when they realize that they are drifting 

 toward marriage and stop to consider if the 

 contemplated union will result in healthful, 

 mentally well-endowed offspring. At present 

 there are few facts so generally known that 

 they will help such persons in their inquiry. 

 It is the province of the new science of 

 eugenics to study the laws of inheritance 

 of human traits and, as these laws are as- 

 certained, to make them known. There is 

 no doubt that when such laws are clearly 

 formulated many certainly unfit matings 

 will be avoided and other fit matings that 

 have been shunned through false scruples 

 will be happily contracted." 



For the trials of this life of yours, 

 There's no antidote like the out-of-doors. 



Sun, air, exercise, 

 The trinity of health! 



