SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



423 



periments selected to illustrate the habits 

 and life history of plants." The author was 

 the translator of Oel's Pflanzenphysiologische 

 Versuche, and his book is the outcome of 

 comments and suggestions from laboratories 

 in which this translation has been in use. 

 The general form of OeFs manual is fol- 

 lowed; many cuts and a few paragraphs 

 from the translation are used; but it has 

 teen modified and reduced in size to con- 

 form more nearly to the needs of American 

 primary students. The text is admirably 

 clear and the experiments instructive and 

 easily performed. 



Prof. .L. H. Bailey has compressed a won- 

 derful amount of information between the 

 covers of Ms Rule-book.* While of most 

 value to the fruit-grower, truck-gardener, or 

 florist, many of its directions, recipes, and 

 tables are needed by every person who has a 

 garden plot or a lawn. It contains direc- 

 tions for making and applying insecticides 

 and fungicides, for preventing the depreda- 

 tions of small animals and birds, and for 

 making and taking care of paths and lawns ; 

 recipes for grafting waxes, cements, paints, 

 and glues, tables of weights of seeds, quanti- 

 ties required for an acre, time for planting, 

 time of germinating and maturing, directions 

 for keeping fruits And vegetables, for pre- 

 dicting the weather, for but we have not 

 space to give a full table of contents. This 

 as a third edition of the book, revised and 

 extended, and apparently well-nigh perfected. 

 We have not seen a better seventy-five cents' 

 worth of handy literature in many moons. 



Educational methods are being so much 

 discussed to-day that any publication dealing 

 with this subject is of special interest 

 Prof. MunroJ* book f is a history of the 

 changes which have come about in the peda- 

 gogist's point of view since the Renaissance. 

 He sketches the revolt against medievalism, 

 with Rabelais as the moving force. Francis 

 Bacon does the same duty in the movement 

 against classicism. The author says that 

 Descartes was the greater thinker, but be- 

 lieves that he was less of a power at the time 



* The Horticulturist's Rule-book. By L. H. 

 Bailey. Pp. 302, 16mo. London and New York : 

 MacmiHan &Co. Price, 75 cents. 



t The Educational Ideal. By Jam.^s Phinney 

 Munroe. Pp. 262, 12ino. Boston : D C. Heath 

 & Go. Price, $1. 



than Bacon, In the fourth chapter he nar- 

 rates the downfall of feudalism and the part 

 which Gomenius played in it. In Chapter V, 

 The Child has Senses to be Trained, the effect 

 of the teachings of Montaigne and Locke are 

 reviewed. The Jansenists and FSnelon, Rous- 

 seau, Pestalozzi and Froebel, and Women in 

 Education each have a chapter. The au- 

 thor's views may be seen in the following 

 passages taken from the last page of the 

 book: "The new conception of the school- 

 master's task makes the educational problem 

 simpler. . . . Comenius's * mother- school,' 

 ' that should exist in every house,' is be- 

 coming possible ; upon the fundamental plan 

 of such a mother-school all education must 

 be shaped. It is no longer a simple question 

 of the intellectual value of this study and 

 of that ; it is no longer to be decided what 

 manner and quantity of information shall 

 be given; it is a question now of determin- 

 ing those subjects and those methods which 

 shall best supplement and carry forward the 

 training of character, the real education to 

 true manhood and true womanhood that is 

 or ought to be given in the home under the 

 parents' guidance. 1 * 



Biology is attracting increasing attention 

 from students of science. In its study now 

 lies the chief hope of solving the questions 

 of heredity and organic evolution. The book 

 before us * is the third publication from a 

 series of biological lectures which are deliv- 

 ered every summer at the Woods Holl Ma- 

 rine Laboratory. The first volume was re- 

 ceived so favorably in 1890 that the authors 

 were encouraged to continue their publica- 

 tion. This number contains thirteen lectures. 

 Among them are Life from a Physical Stand- 

 point, by A. E. Dolbear; A Dynamical Hy- 

 pothesis of Inheritance, by J. A. Ryder ; 

 On the Limits of Divisibility of Living Mat- 

 ter, by J. Loeb ; Cell Division and Develop- 

 ment, by J. P. McMurrich; The Problems, 

 Methods, and Scope of Developmental Me- 

 chanics, by W. Roux; ana Evolution and 

 Epigenesis, by C. 0. Whitman. The book 

 is in no sense a popular one, and must find 

 its readers among special students of biology 

 and the related sciences. 



* Biological Lectures delivered at the Marine 

 Biological Laboratory of Woods Holl, 1894. Pp. 

 287, 8vo. Bost&n : Ginn & Co. Price, $2.65. 



