S CIENTIFIC LIT ERA T URE. 



563 



sketches and stoiies, like the smoking-saloon 

 yarns of the second chapter, Mr. Reeves 

 gives his experiences and impressions of the 

 Friendly Islands, Tonga and its recent trou- 

 bled history, " Kava and some Customs," 

 Samoa, the Fijian group, the Cook group, 

 and the Society Islands, adding obiter obser- 

 vations and incidents of various sorts, and 

 not by any means omitting solid information. 

 The last chapter relates to the missionaries, 

 and is unfriendly to them. 



In a sermon on The 'Evolution of a Senti- 

 ment — Kindness to Animals in the Christian 

 World^ the Rev. Newton M. Mann, of Omaha, 

 argues that the duty of kindness and tender- 

 ness to animals is not an original Christian 

 doctrine and is nowhere mentioned in the 

 Scriptures, but is of later development ; and 

 that the Hindus long anticipated Christians 

 in enunciating it. (H. S. Mann, Omaha. Five 

 cents.) 



The Chemical Publishing Company, Eas- 

 ton. Pa., publishes Methods for the Analysis of 

 Ores, Pig Iron, and Steel, in Use at the Labo- 

 ratories of Iron and Steel Works in the Region 

 about Pittsburg, Pa. ; contributed by the 

 chemists in charge, and edited by a com- 

 mittee of the Chemical Section, Engineers' 

 Society of Western Pennsylvania (price, $1). 

 In a circular inviting these articles from 

 chemists the committee defined the aim of 

 the section to be to secure accurate state- 

 ments of analytical processes, describing with 

 minuteness and clearness the successive steps, 

 in order that the compilation may represent 

 as correctly as possible the present status of 

 analytical chemistry as applied to iron and 

 steel. Sixteen responses were received, de- 

 tailing the methods pursued at as many 

 furnaces. They are all given in this volume, 

 with an appendix containing various special 

 methods of analysis of ores and furnace 

 products. 



Prof. Alfred Fairhurst, of Kentucky Uni- 

 versity, publishes in the volume entitled Or- 

 ganic Evolution Considered the objections to 

 the theory of organic evolution that have oc- 

 curred to him from time to time in the course 

 of his discussions of the subject in his college 

 classes. He finds that organic life can not 

 be accounted for as a function of chemistry, 

 energy, or spontaneous generation ; that natu- 

 ral selection does not afford an adequate ex- 



planation of the varieties of life, the argu- 

 ment for it is inadequate, and the objections 

 to it are forcible; and "that the lack of 

 harmony in the teaching of evolutionists 

 shows that there is much vagueness as to the 

 details of the theory " ; that many difficul- 

 ties beset the argument from paleontology; 

 failure of the argument from embryology to 

 cover the ground sufBciently ; and special ob- 

 jections. Under the head of Several Chap- 

 ters on Other Subjects included in the book 

 may be placed the chapters on Instincts, 

 The Origin of Man, a Future Life, Design in 

 Nature, Evil and Altruism in Nature, and 

 Agnosticism. The author presents his argu- 

 ments in good shape and with good temper, 

 but they seem to us to relate to a phase in 

 the discussion that has been passed by both 

 sides. (Published by the Christian Publish- 

 ing Company, St. Louis.) 



The Phytogeny and Taxonomy of Angio- 

 sperms was the subject of the address of the 

 retiring president, Charles E. Bessey, of the 

 Botanical Society of America, in August, 

 1897. The author approached the problem 

 by the three lines of investigation — viz., the 

 historical, in which the materials are sup- 

 plied by phytopaleontology ; the ontonoge- 

 netic, in which the development of the indi- 

 vidual supplies the necessary data ; and the 

 morphological, in which the different develop- 

 ment of homologous parts supplies our index 

 of relationship. 



The principal portion of Part XXXIII of 

 the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical 

 Research is taken up with Dr. Richard Hodg- 

 kin's Further Record of his Observations of 

 Certain Phenomena of Trance (Mrs. Piper's 

 case). The development of automatic hand- 

 writing is considered, and the indications are 

 noted of the trnth of the " spirit " hypothesis 

 as against that of telepathy from the living. 

 In a supplementary article Mr. Harlow Gale 

 gives an account of Psychical Research in 

 American Universities. 



Another of those clear, practical, wholly 

 readable and wholly comprehensible garden 

 manuals by L. H. Bailey, and pubUshed by 

 the Macmillan Company, is The Pruning 

 Book, a monograph of the pruning and train- 

 ing of plants as applied to American condi- 

 tions. No prefatory ceremony is observed, 

 but the reader is introduced at once to " the 



