THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



upon all who were under his command." He 

 was not a martinet or a rigid disciplinarian, 

 but exacted implicit obedience from his sub- 

 ordinates and a prompt and energetic per- 

 formance of duty. He also recognized the 

 reciprocal relations that should exist between 

 a commander and his troops. Great stress 

 has been laid by some writers upon his 

 " dash," but no estimate of his character 

 coald be more erroneous than that which 

 made him only a hard-riding, hard-fighting, 

 and reckless soldier, whose fame and success 

 were due to desperate personal courage and 

 impulsive combativeness, with exceptional 

 good fortune. He had energy and dash, and, 

 added to these, judgment, patience, industry, 

 and full knowledge of all the duties of a 

 commander and a soldier, and deserved all 

 the distinction he won. 



The Annual Report of the New York 

 State Board of Charities for 1894, a bulky 

 volume of 676 pages, is a valuable compila- 

 tion of statistics relating to the charitable 

 institutions and other charities of the State. 

 The total expenditure of the State charities 

 department for the year ending September 

 30, 1894, was $3,877,709.80 ; of county and 

 city institutions, $3,872,985.60 ; and of pri- 

 vate and incorporated societies and associa- 

 tions, $13,231,698.62. This was a total in- 

 crease over 1893 of $574,410.88. 



The Teacher's Mentor (Bardeen, 50 cents) 

 is written to aid the inexperience and guide 

 the uncertainty regarding practical details of 

 the beginner who is without special training. 

 It is, the author says, based on what he now 

 sees would have been useful to him hi his 

 early years of teaching. Among the topics 

 considered are, the outfit for teaching, in- 

 cluding knowledge of subjects to be taught 

 and general information desirable ; necessity 

 for understanding the children ; what educa- 

 tion is ; relations between teacher and trus- 

 tee; desirability of producing a good first 

 impression on the children ; and school rou- 

 tine in detail. 



The studies on which Le Petrole, PAs- 

 phalte, et le Bitumen (Petroleum, Asphalt, and 

 Bitumen), of the late Prof. A. Jaggard, of 

 Neufchatel, is based, were begun in the Jura 

 and the asphalt bed of the Val-de Travers, 

 and were stimulated by the discovery of min- 

 eral oil in the United States. Their purpose 

 was to investigate the origin of the natural 



hydrocarbons. The various theories of pe- 

 troleum are criticised, the mode of its forma- 

 tion is discussed, the discoveries of beds of 

 it in the Old and New Worlds are described ; 

 and bitumen and asphalt are similarly treated. 

 The author concludes that no extraordinary 

 processes or forces are needed to account for 

 the production of these substances, but that 

 it is still going on in the usual Bourse of 

 events, by a kind of natural, slow distillation 

 of organic matter. But in studying the beds 

 it is necessary to discriminate between the 

 original formation of the substances and the 

 displacements which they may have, under- 

 gone afterward, and which may have had 

 much to do in bringing them into their pres- 

 ent position. The book is published by Fe"lix 

 Alcan, Paris, as a number of the French In- 

 ternational Scientific Series. 



In a similar line, though the starting- 

 point is different, is Les Mcrveillcs de la Flore 

 Primitive (Wonders of the Primitive Flora) 

 of M. A. Froment, which is published by 

 Georg & Co., at Geneva and at Paris. It be- 

 gins with a minute study of the carboniferous 

 vegetation, its structure and forms, and pro- 

 ceeds to the discussion of the way in which 

 the coal-forming plants may have been accu- 

 mulated and converted into coal. This is 

 done by gradual, unheated distillation, which, 

 under certain other conditions, produces the 

 hydrocarbons. A preponderant function is 

 ascribed to electricity in the production of 

 the coal plants. This well- reasoned essay is 

 followed by a remarkable speculation over 

 what may have happened if Australia fell 

 upon the earth as a meteoric mass. 



In obedience to an act of Congress, the 

 Commissioner of Labor has made an investi- 

 gation and a report on The Slums of Balti- 

 more, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. 

 The report embraces thirty-three tables, in 

 which are given under various classifications 

 the color or race, country of birth, citizen- 

 ship, illiteracy, occupations, weekly earnings, 

 number of children, bodily condition, etc., 

 of the inhabitants of the districts examined, 

 also the school attendance of their children, 

 the number of families to a tenement, air 

 space to a person, rent paid, and sanitary 

 condition of the tenements. From an analy- 

 sis of the tables it appears that the slums, as 

 compared with other parts of the cities in 

 which they are, have a larger proportion of 



