LITERARY NOTICES. 



559 



ia none other than evolution, which has 

 dawned upon the investigators and thinkers 

 of to-daj. 



On Poltstnthesis and Incorporation as 

 Characteristics of American Lan- 

 guages. By Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. 

 Philadelphia. Pp. 41. 



Dr. Brintos appears to have struck upon 

 an undeveloped mine of linguistic research. 

 Philologists have told us of monosyllabic, 

 agglutinative, and inflectional languages, 

 and of analytic and synthetic languages, 

 and we have means in the libraries of books 

 they have written upon them of learning all 

 about them. The American languages, ac- 

 cording to the present author, present en- 

 tirely different types — those named in the 

 title above — which have so far been only 

 vaguely described, probably because they 

 were only vaguely understood. Polysra- 

 thesis, according to Dr. Brinton, is a method 

 of word-bui'.ding which employs juxtaposi- 

 tion of words with the modifications they 

 usually undergo when brought together, and 

 also words, forms of words, and significant 

 phonetic elements which have no existence 

 apart from the compounds into which they 

 enter. By incorporation, the nominal and 

 pronomial elements of the proposition are 

 subordinated to the verbal elements, and 

 either have no independent existence in the 

 form required by the verb, or are included 

 within the specific verbal signs of tense and 

 mood. By the use of these methods, of which 

 various illustrative examples are given from 

 several languages, the whole sentence is 

 woven into a single word. These peculiari- 

 ties constitute the American languages a 

 distinct and independent class. 



CoNSANGCiNEors Marriages : their Effect 

 UPON Offspring. By Charles F. With- 

 isgton, M. D. Roxburv, Massachusetts. 

 Pp. 32. 



Dr. Withington inquires into the valid- 

 ity of the belief that consanguinity of 

 parents is in and of itself detrimental to 

 offspring. He finds the evidence usually 

 presented in favor of that opinion insufii- 

 cicnt to demonstrate it. He presents evi- 

 dence collected by himself, which, while he 

 is far from regarding it as decisive, seems 

 to go a great way toward justifying a neg- 

 ative view of the case. 



Bad Times. An Essay on the Present De- 

 pression of Trade, tracing it to its Sources 

 iu Enormous Foreign Loans, Excessive 

 War Expenditure, the Increase of Specu- 

 lation and of Millionaires, and the De- 

 population of the Rural Districts. With 

 Suggested Remedies. By Alfred Kis- 

 sel Wallace, LL. D. New York : Mac- 

 millan & Co. Pp. 118. Price, 75 

 cents. 



A premium was offered in England, 

 known as the " Pears Prize," of one hun- 

 dred guineas for the best essay on the depres- 

 sion of trade. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, 

 the celebrated naturalist and philosophic 

 thinker, who anticipated the chief work of 

 Darwin, competed for it. It was, of course, 

 thought singular that a traveling naturalist, 

 a collector of butterflies, and an investigator 

 on the origin of species, should have the as- 

 surance to strike into the great field of 

 finance and international trade relations 

 with a view of determining the causes of 

 the present extensive hard times. But Mr. 

 Wallace was not unprepared for the task. 

 In his early life he had spent twelve years 

 as a land surveyor and valuer, when he had 

 much observation of agricultural life, and 

 became familiar with a wide range of facts 

 which had a bearing upon the land question 

 now so prominent, and all of which gave a 

 turn to his thought that well prepared him 

 to take up the present discussion. But Mr. 

 Wallace did not get the prize. His inde- 

 pendent handling of the general subject, 

 the deviation of many of his views from 

 orthodox lines, and the introduction of new 

 and more comprehensive causes of the pre- 

 vailing bad times, probably explained the 

 failure of his essay before the committee 

 of award. 



But the book is none the less valuable 

 because uncrowned with a golden prize, and 

 he did well to have it printed. In review- 

 ing his previous works we have had repeated 

 occasion to speak of his power as a clear 

 thinker and lucid writer, and the present 

 volume illustrates these traits as signally 

 as anything he has previously done. He 

 first states the general problem, and then 

 considers the popular explanations for the 

 extensive business depression, which is fol- 

 lowed by the criteria indispensable to a 

 true explanation. In successive chapters 

 he takes up the baneful influence of ex- 

 tensive foreign loans, both upon England 



