6i4 



NATURE 



[February 4, 191 5 



combination the talents of administrator as well as 

 teacher, he forgets how much of Dr. Kerschen- 

 steiner's success is due to conscription. It is a 

 conscript army that has rendered possible con- 

 script continuation schools, and the iron discipline 

 of the whole system of higher education in Ger- 

 many. The essential condition of reform in con- 

 tinuation school work in Great Britain and in the 

 United States is to secure there, as has been done 

 in most German States, that young- persons who 

 have left the elementary school and gone to work 

 shall continue their education in day, not night, 

 classes. But the hope will be nursed on both 

 sides of the Atlantic that this end will be achieved 

 by some milder political measure than conscrip- 

 tion. 



As regards the training of vocational teachers, 

 few will refuse assent to Dr. Taylor's contention 

 that "a teacher of trades must be expert in two 

 arts — the art of teaching and the art of some 

 craft," Theorising on the subject, educationists 

 tend to give excessive prominence to its pedagogic 

 aspect. In practice they are forced to act like 

 business-men, and to accept a working com- 

 promise. 



The bibliography is quite inadequate. Perhaps 

 the most notable omission is that of Dr. Stanley 

 Hall's great work on "Adolescence." Even an 

 American book should acknowledge the world's 

 debt to that distinguished American philosopher. 



(2) Few words are needed to commend Mr. 

 Bailey's "Class-book of Commercial Knowledge." 

 It is an excellent little book, and should be of the 

 utmost value in secondary schools where some 

 introduction to commercial studies is at last being 

 recognised as desirable. The form of the book is 

 good, for it is planned like an up-to-date text- 

 book on other secondary-school subjects, the 

 examples are modern and business-like, the 

 specimens of business documents bound up with 

 the text are a pleasure to handle, and may even 

 stir the imagination of a future captain of indus- 

 try. The author has succeeded in his object, viz. , 

 to show that the subject of commerce is both edu- 

 cative and interesting. Bookkeeping proper has 

 been wisely left alone, as a separate subject. In a 

 new edition more might well be said in section iii. , 

 dealing with office work, on modern methods of 

 card-indexing and filing. 



OUR BOOKSHELF. 



Siviat I Czlowiek. By A, Heflich and S. Michal- 



ski. Vol, iv. Pp. 355. Second Edition. 



(Warsaw: Published by the Editors, 1913.) 



Price 2 roubles. 



Unique in its kind and of broad educational value 



is a Polish publication organised in Warsaw some 



NO. 2.262, VOL. 94] 



years ago and edited from the beginning by 

 Messrs. Al. Heflich and St. Michalski. The whole 

 work, the aim of which is to help the self-educator 

 in all the principal branches of scientific know- 

 ledge and scientific method, consists of three 

 series: (i) "A Guide for Autodidacts," (ii) "Man 

 and the Universe " (the universe in the light of 

 the theory of evolution), and (iii) "The History of 

 Thought." The recently-published second edition 

 of vol. iv. of the second series contains a very 

 interesting exposition of social evolution among 

 animals and men, and of moral evolution, by Dr. 

 L. Krzywicki, a thorough chapter on evolution 

 of psychical life, by Dr. M. Borowski ; further, 

 an exposition of evolution in art, by Dr. W. 

 Tatarkiewicz ; and, finally, an inquiry by Dr. Fl. 

 Znaniecki into the meaning of evolution of man 

 and of the universe. 



The. present volume closes a large circle of 

 ideas developed in the three first volumes which, 

 after an introductory treatment of the concept of 

 evolution in general, bring the (advanced) private 

 student face to face with the facts and problems 

 of universal and terrestrial evolution, of the evolu- 

 tion of plants, animals and man, of human 

 civilisation, of language and economic life. The 

 "Guide" proper (series I.) consists of several 

 independent volumes covering the needs of the 

 self-educator in the departments of mathematics, 

 natural sciences, philology and history, sociology 

 and law, and philosophy. 



It may not be out of place to mention that the 

 whole publication, which, since 1898, has been 

 circulated in many thousands of cheap but beauti- 

 ful volumes, is entirely supported by the Mianow- 

 ski-Fund, a national institution of great social 

 utilitv, and by the disinterested labours of the 

 editors. L. Silber stein. 



Crystallography: an Outline of the Geometrical 



Properties of Crystals. By Prof. T. L. Walker. 



Pp. xiv + 204. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book 



Co., Inc.; London: Hill Publishing Co., Ltd., 



191 4.) Price 8s. ^d. net. 

 The theodolite form of goniometer was invented, -m 

 and the advantage of determining the position of i 

 a face on a crystal by a pair of co-ordinate read- 

 ings of a single setting was pointed out almost 

 simultaneously by a German, Goldschmidt, and a 

 Russian, Fedorov. The method had, however, 

 been used some years before by an Englishman, 

 Miller, but the posthumous paper in which it was 

 used escaped general notice. It is, however, 

 largely due to the teaching of Goldschmidt and 

 the series of researches carried out by him and his 

 pupils . that the convenience of the two-circle 

 measurement of crystals has become widely recog- 

 nised. 



Prof. Walker is imbued with the Goldschmidt 

 spirit, and essays in the volume before us to 

 remove the reproach that no text-book on crys- 

 tallography written in the English tongue is based 

 on that rnethod. We think that his effort has 

 been crowned with but qualified success. The 

 discussion of the different classes of crystal sym- 

 metry and the types of symmetry characterising 



I 



