S CIENTIFIC LIT ERA T URE. 



421 



all authority outside their own bound- 

 aries." 



" No book up to recent date," says 

 the author of Pantheism, the Light and 

 Hope of Modern Reason, who signs his 

 name C. Amryc, and gives no publisher's 

 name, " has treated pantheism as con- 

 sistently as it deserves to be treated"; 

 and he adds that " it is no creed ; it is 

 a logic; it makes absolutely no demand 

 upon ' belief ' ; what is not logical is re- 

 jected, what is logical to-day is ac- 

 cepted, no matter whether it was un- 

 logical a thousand years ago or will be 

 illogical a thousand years hence; We are 

 only responsible for our times." As pan- 

 theism, if it is a true logic, must be ap- 

 plicable to all races, the author has not 

 chosen his examples from one nation pr 

 tribe; and he believes that the views he 

 expresses are also those of nine tenths 

 of what is called modern science. Many 

 topics are treated of, some of which 

 would not at first thought be associ- 

 ated with an exposition of pantheism. 

 The matter and manner of the book are 

 various. Parts of it are fairly good read- 

 ing; other parts strike us as diflerent. 



A book on The Principles of Agricul- 

 ture, prepared by Prof. L. H. Bailey as 

 a text-book for schools and rural so- 

 cieties, is published as a number of the 

 Rural Science Series of the Macmillan 

 Company ($1.25). In it agriculture is 

 treated as a business, not a science, but 

 as a business which is aided at every 

 point by a knowledge of science. " It 

 is on the science side that the experi- 

 menter is able to help the farmer. On 

 the business side the farmer must rely 

 upon himself, for the person who is not 

 a good business man can not be a good 

 farmer, however much he may know of 

 science." The principle of the intelli- 

 gent application of knowledge is illus- 

 trated in a remark of the author's about 

 the treating of drainage. The learner 

 is apt to begin at the wrong end of his 

 problem. In the usual method the pupil 

 or reader is first instructed in methods 

 of laying drains. " But drainage is not 

 the unit. The real unit is texture and 

 moisture of soils — plowing, draining, 

 green cropping, are methods of produc- 

 ing a given or desired result. The real 

 subject-matter for first consideration, 

 therefore, is amelioration of soil, rather 

 than laying of drains." Professor Bailey 



aims throughout this book to get at 

 " the real subject-matter for first con- 

 sideration " in matters relating to soils, 

 the plant and crops, and the animals 

 and stock. 



Ideals and Programmes (C. W. Bar- 

 deen, Syracuse, N. Y., 75 cents) is a col- 

 lection of thoughtful and suggestive es- 

 says, by Jean L. Gourdy, on the prac- 

 tical side of school life and the teach- 

 ing of children. The author's ideal 

 seems to be that the teacher should 

 liave a plan for her work, preparing for 

 it so as to have the whole course marked 

 out on general lines for the entire school 

 year. Thus, her occupation should be to 

 qualify herself for doing the work right. 

 These statements of general principles 

 are followed by essays on reading and 

 plans for teaching, correlation as " the 

 headstone of the comer of successful 

 teaching, geography, sand modeling, 

 field lessons, kindergarten training, and 

 discipline." The burden of the whole is 

 by skillful adaptation to get the best 

 possible out of every lesson, in which 

 a liberal use of field work assists great- 

 h', and above all to avoid the stiff, for- 

 mal, juiceless lessons of the old style of 

 teaching. 



There have been several biographies 

 of Faraday, most of them now out of 

 print; but the life, work, methods, char- 

 acter, and aims of the man — who was 

 " beyond all question the greatest scien- 

 tific expositor of his time " — can not be 

 kept too constantly or too long before the 

 minds of students. Welcome, therefore, 

 is the easily accessible and convenient 

 volume Michael Faraday: His Life and 

 Work, which has been prepared by Prof. 

 t^ylvanus P. Thompson, and is published 

 by the Macmillan Company in their 

 Century Science Series ($1.25). The 

 work by which Faraday contributed so 

 much to the advancement of knowledge 

 is made prominent, and is illustrated 

 largely, due regard being had to the 

 limitations of the size of the book, with 

 citations from his own journal and 

 copies of his drawings. 



In American Indians, a book second 

 in order but first in date of publication 

 of a series of " Ethno-Geographic Read- 

 ers " (D. C. Heath & Co., Boston), Prof. 

 Frederick Starr has succeeded in con- 

 A'eying a large amount of information 

 about our aborigines in a very small 



