SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 847 



painful manipulation of the arm. He also considers the expression of 

 pain in the faces of certain classic pieces of statuary. Pain is not fear, and 

 this interesting chapter seems to have been introduced as a substitute for 

 material that it was not pi'acticable to obtain. Opportunities for observ- 

 ing fear in children, both in their waking and sleeping hours, are not so 

 rare as in the case of adults. Our author discusses both hereditary or in- 

 stinctive and induced fears of little folk and gives some suggestions as to 

 education for courage. Other aspects of his subjects treated in the closing 

 chapters are the influence of fear on the skin and excretions, the paralyz- 

 ing influence of terror on man and animals, and the maladies and even 

 cases of death which great fright has produced. The treatment is popular 

 throughout, and some of the author's descriptions — for instance, those of 

 stage fright and delirium tremens — rise to the picturesque. It contains 

 many things that a reader would want to refer to after a first reading, but 

 its translators do not seem to think so, for they have left it without an 

 index. 



Mr. Conant has added to the literature of the banking business a not- 

 ably convenient and instructive book.* His record begins with banking in 

 Italy, in which country the bank that is considered to have been the oldest, 

 that of Venice, was founded. This is followed by accounts of banking 

 operations in the other countries of Europe. Coming to America, he gives 

 a chapter each to the Bank of the United States, the State banking systems, 

 and the national banking system now in operation. The banks of Canada, 

 Latin America, Africa, and the East also receive attention. While the 

 author has not departed from his historical plan so far as to write a treatise 

 on banking, yet he does not refrain from characterizing the good and the 

 bad features of the systems that he describes. He rates the Scotch system 

 of banks of issue as coming " nearer to the ideal of successful free banking 

 than that of any other country," and shows that the Canadian banks were 

 founded on Scotch models, and the first one of them largely by Scotchmen. 

 He also gives in his first chapter a brief statement of the theory of a 

 banking currency, and concludes the volume by setting forth the chief ad- 

 vantages of such a medium. Many persons who are most firmly resisting 

 the present agitation for a change in the coinage system of the United 

 States are convinced that a modification of our method of issuing paper 

 money is urgently needed. Mr. Conant shares this conviction, and in the 

 chapters just mentioned, as well as in the one especially devoted to our 

 national banking system, he vigorously affirms the superior elasticity of 

 bank currency over issues of Treasury notes, and condemns many of the 

 existing restrictions on the circulation of banks as unduly burdensome. 



Another historical division of the volume relates to crises — the earlier 

 and later ones of the present century, including that of 1893 — with a dis- 

 cussion of the causes of these catastrophes. The tendency of the work is 

 to reveal the operation of natural laws in monetary affairs, and to show 

 that legislation that conflicts with these laws always works mischief. 



* A History of Modern Banks of Issne, with an Account of the Economic Crises of the Present 

 Century. By Charles A. Conant. Pp. 595, 8vo. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

 Price, g3. 



