THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tributes to deceased educators, which would 

 be better published elsewhere. A little far- 

 ther on the editor has a tilt with Prof. C. M. 

 Woodward, and near the end several defenses 

 of the public schools, having no bearing on 

 the proper subject of the report, are brought 

 in. The report proper consists of five hundred 

 pages of well-digested material, being mostly 

 accounts of the instruction in industrial art 

 and the use of mechanical tools that has been 

 introduced in various places. This is followed 

 by eight hundred pages of appendixes made 

 up of miscellaneous reports, essays, and ad- 

 dresses, parts of which are valuable, other 

 parts pleasant but vague, and much of the 

 whole merely duplicating other matter in the 

 volume. There is a great deal of matter in 

 these appendixes that only makes the vol- 

 ume clumsy and impedes the earnest student 

 of pedagogy. Here and there we find poeti- 

 cal quotations or wholly unnecessary lists of 

 names, and in one place a lot of " after-din- 

 ner " speeches with the " applause " duly in- 

 terjected. It is no wonder that the public 

 printer can not get these bulky reports out 

 until they are stale, and that so many copies 

 go unread back to the paper- vat. 



A little text-book devoted wholly to men- 

 suration has been prepared by Alfred J. 

 Pearce, and is published by Longmans, Green 

 & Co., under the title Longmans' School Men- 

 suration (80 cents). It comprises reduction 

 of denominate numbers and the calculation 

 of lengths, areas, and volumes. There are a 

 large number of examples at the end of each 

 section, and several sets of examination pa- 

 pers have been introduced. A simple proof 

 of nearly every rule is given. The diagrams 

 illustrating the various figures and solids are 

 very numerous, and have been carefully pre- 

 pared. 



The Step-by- Step Primer, prepared by Mrs. 

 E. B. Burnz (Burnz & Co., 24 Clinton Place, 

 New York, 25 cents), embodies a thoroughly 

 scientific mode of teaching reading. The 

 phonetic principle is the basis of its method, 

 and the author does not allow any such host 

 of exceptions and deviations from this prin- 

 ciple as often makes what passes for " phonic 

 teaching " into a mongrel practice. The au- 

 thor insists that the letters shall be regarded 

 as standing for spoken sounds, just as defi- 

 nitely as the characters in a piece of music 

 stand for musical sounds. No one can ques- 



tion that this was the intention of the an- 

 cient inventors of the alphabet, but the fact 

 is too often lost sight of, especially by teach- 

 ers of reading. la this primer each letter is 

 made to show what sound it stands for, and 

 the learner has only to combine these several 

 sounds to get the whole word. This is ef- 

 fected by means of the Burnz's Pronouncing 

 Print, the chief feature of which is that 

 when a letter has an irregular sound this 

 sound is indicated by a small subscript letter 

 cast on the shoulder of the type. Webster's 

 diacritics are also made use of, and silent 

 letters are denoted by Leigh's hair-line type. 

 Some Hints on Phonic Teaching are ap- 

 pended to the book. The primer is attract- 

 ively illustrated and neatly printed. 



In a volume of 443 p ages, John C. Bran- 

 ner, Ph. D., State Geologist of Arkansas, has 

 issued Vol. Ill of the Geological Survey of 

 Arkansas. This volume concerns " whet- 

 stones and the novaculites of Arkansas," and 

 was prepared by L. S. Griswold, assistant 

 geologist. The whetstone industry is very 

 exhaustively treated, and the admirable illus- 

 trations and maps will be found very useful. 

 The last chapter is devoted to an interesting 

 account of The Fossils of the Novaculite 

 Area, and contains articles by R. R. Gurley, 

 H. D., and Charles S. Prosser, on The Geo- 

 logical Age of the Graptolite Shales of Ar- 

 kansas and Notes on Lower Carboniferous 

 Plants. (Little Rock, Ark., Press Printing 

 Company, 1892.) 



Under the title Coal Pits and Pitmen, 

 R. Nelson Boyd, M. Inst. C. E., has recast 

 his publication Coal Mines Inspection ; its 

 History and Results. In this volume of 256 

 pages the author reviews the conditions of 

 the mining operatives of Great Britain, and 

 gives in somewhat of detail a history of the 

 legislation for the prevention of the employ- 

 ment of women and children in coal mines. 

 Considerable space is devoted to an exami- 

 nation of the causes of explosions in mines, 

 and there are some excellent suggestions as 

 to required legislation in the direction of in- 

 creased inspection. In treating of the de- 

 velopment of the coal industry in England 

 the author gives some very interesting facts : 

 for instance, toward the end of the eighteenth 

 century the yearly output was estimated to 

 be ten millions of tons giving employment 

 to fifty thousand work-people, whereas the 



