80 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [8 :2— Feb., 1912 



thirteen pages, on evolution and heredity of animals and plants. 

 The text is a very excellent one, the descriptions and laboratory 

 directions being quite in accord with recent results of investiga- 

 tions, and one finds interesting paragraphs on some of the valu- 

 able contributions that have been made to human comfort and 

 welfare in recent years from Zoology and Botany. Here is a 

 page under "Bacteria," devoted to the nitrogen fixation by certain 

 bacteria of the soil ; under "The Simplest Animals" there is a 

 paragraph on the parasite of sleeping sickness, and so, throughout 

 the book, as opportunity offers, information has been added along 

 these lines of recent research. The text is adapted to Freshman 

 college work, or might be used in the later High School years. 



Animal Competitors, by Ernest Ingersoll. pp. Xn-|-319. 

 Sturgis & Walton Co., New York. $0.75. 



This is one of the series of TDOoks edited by Ernest Ingersoll, 

 and known as the Young Farmer's Practical Library. The ani- 

 mal competitors are those animals, principally the rodents, which 

 take toll so extensively of the farmer's crops. There are chap- 

 ters on the Pest of Rats, the Meadow-mouse and its Mischiefs, 

 Squirrels Good and Bad, Suppression of Rodents as Pests, Foxes 

 and Fox-farming, etc. Altogether it is a very interesting book, 

 and one that the young farmer or young American of any sort 

 will read with interest. The chapters on Poisoning and Trapping 

 and the Suppression of Rodents are sufficiently explicit to be of 

 real use. 



Nature Study on the Farm. Soils and Plants. Charles A. 

 Keflfer. American Book Co. pp. 154. $0.40. 



This book is intended for children of ten to fourteen years 

 of age, and both in point of illustration and in character of the 

 text is much better adapted to instruction in elementary agri- 

 culture than many of the more pretentious books that come out 

 under the title of "Agriculture." The illustrations are excellent, 

 and the text is clear. There is a tendency to personification, as 

 if a fourteen-year-old child would not be quite as interested in 

 the purple turnip without calling it a "Miss." The opening pages 

 on the soil and its relations to the plants are particularly good, 

 and the chapters on Ploughing and Cultivation seem clear and 

 easily within the comprehension of the child. The book is in the 

 nature of a supplementary reader, although there are some direc- 

 tions at the close of the book — some twenty pages in all — for 

 practical work. 



