LITERARY NOTICES. 



853 



and preserved five hundred species of plants, 

 and laid the foundation for a thorough ac- 

 quaintance with botany. He was next placed 

 with a country surgeon, and here undertook 

 by himself the study of comparative anatomy, 

 dissecting animals and birds, and executing 

 drawings of marvelous exactness and beauty. 

 It may well be credited that at fifty years of 

 age he had produced more original work than 

 any other English anatomist. His zest for 

 knowledge and keen enjoyment of Nature 

 never waned. At sixty-five he writes : " The 

 sight of the wild flowers, the settling of a 

 speckled, metallic feathered starling close to 

 me, and the song of the lark made weariness 

 a trifle ; . . . the joy of research has been the 

 wine of my life." A characteristic portrait 

 is the frontispiece to the memoir, and a list 

 of published works is given at the close, these 

 being mainly upon the foraminif era, the verte- 

 brate skeleton, and skull. 



HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND DEMOG- 

 RAPHY. By E. F. WILLOUGHBY, M. D. 

 London and New York : Macmillan & 

 Co. Pp. 495. Price, $1.50. 



THIS volume constitutes the third edition, 

 enlarged and revised, of a former work, the 

 Principles of Hygiene, by the same author. 



The subject is treated in four main divi- 

 sions health of the man, health of the house, 

 health of the city, and health of the people. 

 In addition to these there are chapters on 

 demography, meteorology, and sanitary law. 



Much space is given to the section on 

 dietetics, where somewhat of the changes in- 

 volved in nutrition are explained according 

 to the experiments of Pettenkof er and Yoigt. 

 The prevalent error is noted of confounding 

 oxidation with metabolic processes in the 

 body. The value of a food depends upon 

 the ease with which it digests, splits up, and 

 combines in the organism, not upon the con- 

 stituents per se. 



Common snares are also pointed out in 

 the food that does not nourish, the filter 

 that is worse than useless, the barometer 

 which measures nothing, the disinfection 

 that does not disinfect, and the statistics 

 that prove a trap for the unwary. But the 

 effort of the book is mostly constructive, 

 and there is much in it that is valuable for 

 the student of statistics and the householder. 

 The unfortunate schoolgirl may, if it falls 



into her hands, drop it with righteous scorn. 

 The chapter on school hygiene is disfigured 

 by a thrust at feminine ability and the 

 threadbare plea that woman's health suffers 

 in the educative process. The author, illogi- 

 cal enough, gives the best possible reply to 

 this in his dissertation on exercise, where he 

 informs us that most of the ailments of 

 women would be prevented if girls strength- 

 ened their muscles as their brothers do ! 



The Child, Physically and Mentally, is 

 considered by Bertha Meyer in a small pam- 

 phlet translated from the German by Friede- 

 rike Salomon and published by the M. L. 

 Holbrook Co. A similar work was written 

 by the author thirteen years ago, and this 

 is intended as a supplement, embodying the 

 more recent teaching of hygienic science. 

 It is curious to note that it contains only two 

 pages of suggestion for the mother who de- 

 sires to rear her child in the natural way. 

 This is certainly not all that should be said 

 on the subject in a country where infant 

 mortality is exceptionally high. An appen- 

 dix is needed to justify the aim and title of 

 the brochure. 



The Arithmetic of Magnetism and Elec- 

 tricity, by John T. Morrow and Thorburn 

 Reid, a little handbook of 145 pages, con- 

 sists of the statement and explanation of 

 those facts and laws of electricity and mag- 

 netism which are especially connected with 

 their practical and commercial aspects. It 

 contains among other matters chapters on 

 General Laws of Electric Circuits ; Batteries, 

 Primary and Secondary ; Direct-current Dy- 

 namos and Motors ; Alternating current Dyna- 

 mos, Motors, and Transformers ; Lighting 

 and Power, and The Application of Electri- 

 cal Laws to Electrical Railways ; with some 

 useful tables. (It is published by the Bubier 

 Publishing Company, of Lynn., Mass., at $1.) 

 A System of Analysis of Milk and Milk 

 Products, containing results of the latest re- 

 searches, is given us by Leffmann and Beam. 

 Most of the earlier processes have been 

 superseded or at least greatly modified in 

 the past few years by the large amount of 

 original work done, more especially under 

 the supervision of the Society of Public 

 Analysts. The book is intended not only 

 for professional chemists, but also for prac- 

 tical dairymen, and to such it ought to prove 



