348 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:7— Oct., 1915 



Sponges, earth worms, fresh water clams, lobsters, skeletons of 

 fish and their internal anatomy, unless because that sort of thing 

 has been prescribed for the high school zoology by many texts. 

 There is certainly nothing original in this chapter in the method of 

 treatment. It would be impossible to do laboratory work covering 

 the forms studied in the time that can be devoted to the one chap- 

 ter. It would be impossible to even do more than take a cursory 

 glance at preparations and prepared specimens. In the chapter 

 on the human body, there is again nothing novel in the treatment. 

 The pages might be culled from almost any elementary text on 

 human physiology. This, of course, embodies one notion of first 

 year science; that we should undertake to give in the first year 

 samples of a number of sciences that the pupil may come to know 

 his interests in order that he may follow in the later years the 

 particular science that appeals to him. With this test as a basis, I 

 should be reasonably certain that very few pupils would go on 

 with their zoology. In the chapters on chemistry and physics, 

 greater use is made of things in the child's environment that appeal 

 to him. And yet even here the headings of paragraphs give one 

 the impression that an attempt has been made rather to present 

 physics than to stimulate a comprehension of the child's surround- 

 ings. 



The High School Age. Irving King. Pp. 233. The Bobbs 

 Merril Co. $1.25. 

 This book is a very good summary of a number of important 

 recent books and articles on the child during his pubertal and 

 adolescent period. There is appended to each chapter a biblio- 

 graphy of the sources of the chapter. The aim of the book is given 

 in the introductory chapter briefly as follows : That there is a deal 

 of retardation and unnecessary elimination of pupils in the early 

 high school years ; that this is in a measure due to our lack of com- 

 prehension of the physiological conditions and the accompanying 

 psychic states of the boys and girls during this revolutionary period. 

 The book undertakes to make clear what the changes are and what 

 their significance is to education. One is impressed in reading the 

 book quite as much with the paucity of information at our disposal 

 at present as with what we do know. If you bring to the book 

 some definite question, such, for instance, as what do we know of 

 the adolescent period that will help us in settling the problems of 



