SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



419 



exhibit, as a whole, by various American 

 writers ; many accounts of American educa- 

 tion by foreign visitors ; notes on the ex- 

 hibits of separate States and foreign coun- 

 tries ; and a series of papers prepared for 

 the World's Library Congress, which to- 

 gether constitute a treatise on library econo- 

 my. Among the subjects presented in other 

 parts of the report are American Educa- 

 tional History ; the Report of the Committee 

 of Ten on Secondary School Studies, with 

 papers relating thereto ; Pecuniary Aid for 

 Students ; the Education of the Negro ; and 

 Medical Education. The usual statistics are 

 presented. Those of the common schools 

 show an increase of 1"92 per cent in enroll- 

 ment and 3'45 per cent in average attend- 

 ance over the preceding year. 



Number 1 of Volume III of The Transit, 

 a magazine published by the Engineering 

 Society of the State University of Iowa, is 

 entirely taken up by a monograph on Port- 

 land Cement, from the pen of Charle.t D. 

 Jameson, Pi'ofessor of Engineering at the 

 university. A general consideration of the 

 properties of lime and cement is followed by 

 some historical data regarding the early use 

 of cement both here and abroad, a general 

 review of the methods of manufacture and 

 testing, and the chemical processes con- 

 cerned in the hardening of hydraulic ce- 

 ments. A number of good pictures show 

 the various pieces of apparatus employed in 

 its manufacture, and several structures in 

 which the so-called monolithic, or artificial 

 stone construction, has been used. 



The last publication in the New Bruns- 

 wick school series to reach us is a little 

 Teachers'' Manual of Nature Lessons, by John 

 Brittain. It aims only, the author says, to 

 be a useful index to some of the elementary 

 chapters of the book of Nature, and to indi- 

 cate briefly the means by which children 

 may be led to read them with pleasure and 

 profit. The text consists of suggestions for 

 talks and simple experiments illustrating 

 some of the more elementary facts of geol- 

 ogy, chemistry, physics, and natural history. 

 (J. & A. McMillan, St. John, N. B.) 



A historical and descriptive sketch of 

 The Yelloivstone National Park, by H. M. 

 Chittendon, has recently come to hand. It 

 deals first and principally with the history of 



the upper Yellowstone, from the days of the 

 early explorers to the present time. The 

 descriptive portion of the work contains a 

 fairly comprehensive treatment of the nat- 

 ural features of the park. Some good maps 

 and a number of well-cliosen pictures, the 

 latter of which are somewhat marred by poor 

 paper and printing, add value to the book. 

 A few illustrated biographical sketches of 

 the early explorers and a bibliography of the 

 literature pertaining to the region are ap- 

 pended. 



Much of the time expended in computa- 

 tions is wasted through the use of an excess- 

 ive number of places of figures, and through 

 failure to employ logarithm tables. The use 

 of logarithms for work of four or more 

 places, not only effects an important saving 

 of time over direct multiplication or division, 

 but also conduces to greater accuracy. Com- 

 putation Rules and Logarithms, by S. W. 

 Holman, consists of a number of simple 

 rules indicating the number of places to be 

 used in a given computation ; '' an explana- 

 tion of the use of the notation by powers of 

 ten ; certain instructions, more or less novel 

 in form, as to the use of the logarithm and 

 other tables ; and a collection of useful 

 tables.'' The book is well bound and 

 printed. (Macmillan, $1.) 



Tlie Molecular Theory of Matter, which 

 has seldom been given more space outside of 

 Germany than a chapter or two in a general 

 work on physics, now has a volume, by A. D. 

 Risteen, devoted to it (Ginn, $2). After giv- 

 ing some general considerations, the author 

 divides his subject into the kinetic theory of 

 gases, of liquids, and of solids, molecular 

 magnitudes, and the constitution of mole- 

 cules. He aims only to present the accepted 

 views on these topics in a form that can be 

 readily grasped by students, and where com- 

 petent physicists disagree he lets the fact be 

 known. There are frequent references to 

 original sources, and some fifty diagrams and 

 other figures are used. 



The Eclectic School Readings is a series 

 of books to supplement the usual school 

 reading books. Two have come to us, Sto- 

 ries of Great Americans for Little Ameri- 

 cans, designed for the usual second-reader 

 grade, and Stories of American Life and Ad- 

 venture, for the third-reader grade (American 



