318 The Microscope. 



Spontaneous attention, when it is deep and tenacious, possesses 

 all the characters of a passion that is never stilled and which is 

 ever striving to attain its object. The dipsomaniac never sees 

 a glass of liquor without drinking it, and were some maleficent 

 sprite to fill it as often as it was emptied, he would never cease 

 to drink. The physical manifestations of attention the author 

 considers to be of great importance, and he examines them at 

 great length, referring to subjective sensation, the change in the 

 breathing and bodily movements, all of which express attention. 

 He also studies the matter from a physiological point of view, 

 inquiring as to what goes on in the brain when considered both 

 as an intellectual and as a motor organ. In the first period of 

 life the child is capable of spontaneous attention alone, fixing 

 the gaze on brilliant objects only, or on the mother's face. 

 Toward the end of the third month it gradually rests its eyes 

 on objects less and less interesting. Later, this fixing of the. 

 gaze becomes intense attention and is translated outwardly by 

 the pronounced contraction of sundry muscles. The birth of 

 voluntary attention, which means the possibility of holding the 

 mind to non-attractive objects, can be brought about only by 

 force, under the influence of education. The author considers 

 the subject in all its bearings, treating of the origin of sponta- 

 neous attention ; the production of artificial attention and the 

 three principal periods of its formation by the action of simple 

 feelings, complex feelings and habits, with the action of atten- 

 tion on the muscles, the morbid states of attention and its phys- 

 ical condition. 



The book is valuable and interesting, but the reader that 

 takes it up anticipating an easy time and a pleasant voyage 

 over smooth intellectual seas, will be disappointed. It will 

 demand considerable mental effort, but the result will amply 

 repay any outlaj' in that direction. It is a welcome addition to 

 the lighter and less abstruse of psychological works. 



The pediculi and mallophaga affecting man and the 

 LOWER animals. Prof Herbert Osborn. 8vo., pp. 56. Wash- 

 ington, D. C. : U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of 

 Entomology, Bulletin No. *7. — A valuable work on the lice in- 

 festing man and the lower animals, describing and figuring most 

 of the known forms. The information here presented can be 

 had elsewhere only by searching through an extensive literature, 



