560 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



who are to use the receipts, concerning the 

 need of care to obtain the right materials 

 and pure materials, to follow the directions 

 precisely, and observe all precautions in de- 

 tail. Tables of weights and measures and 

 chemical synonyms are given in the appendix. 



In the Land of the lAngcring Snow 

 (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.25) a winter 

 outdoor book is given us by Mr. Frank 

 £olles, of Cambridge, Mass. In twenty-six 

 essays the "Stroller in New England," as 

 the author styles himself, chronicles his 

 weekly visit to points of interest within not 

 too hard reach of his home, from January to 

 June. They were made, in fact, twice a week, 

 for he took both Saturday and Sunday for his 

 excursions. In thera he enjoyed the weath- 

 er, whatever it might be, the exultation of 

 facing the fiercest storms if they came, the 

 scenery, and the birds. No stress of weather 

 seems to have deterred him from taking his 

 short railroad trip and long walks, or to have 

 overcome the enterprise of the birds, which 

 he never failed to find in numbers. On the 

 first Sunday of the year, in the deep snow, he 

 finds traces of a crow, fifteen quail, and a 

 robin; the next week, when everything is 

 covered with ice, twenty chickadees, crows, 

 robins, and a hawk ; on the third walk, in a 

 tempest, eighty-five birds, representing nine 

 species. They seem to have been the objects 

 for which he was looking, and he found them. 

 As the spring comes on and advances into 

 summer the pictures gain in freshness and 

 warmth, but the author's mood is always the 

 same. It is that of the lover of Nature who 

 sees beauty and life in all their aspects and 

 knows how to paint them. 



The point of view taken by Mrs. L'llen 

 M. Mitchell, in her 8tud)j of Greek Philosophy 

 (S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago, $1.25), is indi- 

 cated by her dedication of it to the Kant 

 Club of Denver, and her acknowledgment of 

 indebtedness to the Concord School of Phi. 

 losophy, Dr. W. T. Harris, and the histories 

 of Zeller and Hegel. The book grew out of 

 the studies of the author in connection with 

 a woman's club in St. Louis, and afterward 

 in Denver. Her verbal expositions gradually 

 assumed written forms, and eventually came 

 into their present shape ; and the whole bears 

 the impress of the thoughts of the other mem- 

 bers of the clubs as well as of the author's 



own. Beginning with the assertion of the 

 identity of philosophy and the history of 

 philosophy, the author analyzes the charac- 

 ter of the Greek philosophy, and then con- 

 siders it from the beginning, in the pre-sophis- 

 tic philosophy, through all its stages of de- 

 velopment, and as expounded by the larger 

 host of teachers whose names have become 

 identified with much of the best of human 

 thought, and whose influence has endured 

 and is still strong. An introduction is fur- 

 nished by William R. Alger, who glorifies 

 philosophy as the supreme department, the 

 most important and most attractive branch 

 of knowledge, setting it above hterature and 

 science. 



In Ben Bcor, a Story of the Anti-Messiah 

 (Baltimore, Isaac Friedenwald & Co. ; Vicks- 

 burg. Miss., the author), the supernatural and 

 the allegorical are mingled. The aim of the 

 author, H. M. £ien, a rabbi of Vicksburg, 

 Miss., has been to exhibit the agencies which 

 are assumed to have been working during 

 past ages to suppress the rights and liberties 

 of the people ; " upholding serfdom and su- 

 perstition for the benefit of a few privileged 

 classes." The persecutors and haters of man 

 are called as a unit the Anti-Messiah, whose 

 story is set forth under the name of Ben 

 Beor. This character, called after the biblical 

 Balaam Ben Beorz, who is endowed with an 

 immortality like that of the Wandering Jew, 

 appears in the ancient world as the instigator 

 of the great evils which afflicted its nations? 

 as the concocter and distributer of strong 

 liquors and the stimulator of evil passions » 

 as the chief agent in provoking the siege and 

 destruction of Jerusalem, the Roman perse- 

 cution of the Christians, the suppression of 

 knowledge and free thought which marked 

 the dark ages, the promoter of priestcraft 

 and the Inquisition, and the upholder of des- 

 potism down to modern times. The inven- 

 tion of printing and the Reformation were 

 antagonistic to his plans, and his power and 

 his office ceased with the promulgation of 

 the Declaration of Independence. 



The fourth volume of Prof. J. C. Bran- 

 ner's Annual Report of the Geological Sur- 

 vey of Arkansas for ISSS contains the geol- 

 ogy of Washington County and the Plant 

 List for the State. While it has been the 

 plan of the survey to study and report upon 

 geologic topics rather than upon geographic 



