SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 309 



them have made a specialty of such writing. They are twelve in 

 number, some of them still living, while others are dead, and all 

 are Americans. Mrs. Humphrey's object in writing the book has 

 been to give children some idea of the authors themselves as men 

 and women rather than to criticise or describe their writings. Only 

 a few of their more popular works are noticed at much length, the 

 rest being merely mentioned ; but many interesting anecdotes of 

 the authors themselves are related, and all in a style that young 

 readers will not only understand, but enjoy. Some of the authors, 

 such as Longfellow, Bryant, Holmes, and Mrs. Stowe, are quite 

 widely known, while others have a narrower reputation ; but an 

 author's capacity as a writer for children is not to be measured by 

 his success in other directions. It is evident, too, that the fashion 

 in children's books varies from age to age ; for those here noticed 

 are quite different from the RoUo books and the writings of " Peter 

 Parley," which were in vogue forty years ago. Mrs. Humphrey's 

 book gives portraits of all the authors mentioned, which will add 

 greatly to its attractiveness for children ; and they will perhaps 

 wish that she had added her own to the list. 



Eating for Strength ; or, Food and Diet in their Relation to 

 Heajth and Work. By M. L. HoLBROOK, M.D. New York, 

 M. L. Holbrook & Co. 12°. 



In this volume of only 236 pages, the author has discussed 

 a great variety of subjects. He has attempted to combine so much 

 of physiology as concerns digestion with a practical cook-book, and 

 has added a chapter on the alimentary products of the vegetable 

 kingdom. This is one of the books which, so far as we can judge, 

 supplies no want, and its raison d'etre is inexplicable. The physi- 

 ology of digestion is much better described in all the school physi- 

 ologies, and the recipes for the kitchen contain nothing that is 

 especially new or valuable. The composition of the volume is 

 careless, singular verbs frequently being called upon to do duty for 

 a plural subject. There are portions of the book from which 

 teachers could select admirable examples of how sentences should 

 not be constructed. We select one of these as an illustration : 

 " After the stomach has done all it can in the way of digesting the 

 albuminous matter in our food, it is passed through the pyloric 

 orifice at its end into the duodenum, in an acid condition." We do 

 not blame the stomach for being in an acid condition, if, after hav- 

 ing done its full digestive duty, it is passed through the pyloric 

 orifice into the duodenum. Such treatment would be apt to " sour" 

 the most patient organ in the body ; and even the stomach, which 

 has the reputation of being " long-suffering," might justly display its 

 displeasure if called upon to suffer this distortion but once, and 

 much more if asked to do it three times a day throughout a natural 

 lifetime. Other examples of careless coinposition might be men- 

 tioned, but they would add nothing to the one we have selected. 



The author's chemistry is equally faulty with his composition. 

 In speaking of the carbo-hydrates, he says that they are called 

 " carbo-hydrates " because chemically composed of carbon and 

 water, and then follows with the remarkable statement that the 

 chemical formula of cane-sugar is, carbon, 12 ; hydrogen, II ; oxy- 

 gen, II ; and that of grape-sugar, carbon, 12; hydrogen, 12; and 

 oxygen, 12. 



Taken as a whole, this book is one we not only cannot recom- 

 mend, but which we deem it our duty to condemn. 



A Grammar of the Latin La7igiiage for the Use of Schools and 

 Colleges. By E. A. Andrews and S. Stoddard. Revised 

 by Henry Preble. Boston, Houghton, MifHin, & Co. 12°. 

 $1.12. . 



In the thirty years since this grammar was last revised, opinions 

 have changed somewhat as to what the contents of such a book 

 should be, and how they should be presented. The reviser has 

 consequently found himself driven further and further from the 

 earlier form of the grammar, and has moulded his materials into a 

 form corresponding better with the present state of Latin philology. 

 Most of the old paradigms have been retained, and others have 

 been added. In the case of the regular verb, the four conjugations 

 are printed side by side, so that they are more easily seen to be 

 really varieties of one conjugation, and their forms are more easily 

 implanted in the memory than when learned in four isolated groups. 



Many of the old examples also remain, and some new ones have 

 been introduced. 



The general sequence of topics has not been greatly altered, the 

 most important changes being the following : The sections treat- 

 ing of word-formation have been gathered into one place, instead 

 of being distributed among the different parts of speech in connec- 

 tion with their inflection ; and the treatment of word-formation is 

 made more effective by giving the pupil some insight into the pro- 

 cesses of the growth of words instead of merely classifying deriva- 

 tives according to their apparent endings. The treatment of ad- 

 verbs (except their comparison), prepositions, and other particles, 

 has been transferred partly to " Word- Formation," and partly to 

 " Syntax." The rules of quantity have been brought into the early 

 part of the book instead of being relegated to " Versification ; " 

 and, while the rules of agreement for adjectives and pronouns re- 

 main in their old place at the beginning of " Syntax," the rest of 

 the syntax of such words has been postponed till after the treat- 

 ment of the cases, in order to secure a more natural progression in 

 the study of syntactic details. On account of the necessary intro- 

 duction of new matter, no attempt has been made to retain the 

 old numbering of the sections ; and the book is divided only into 

 sections and sub-sections, with occasional notes ; the three kinds 

 of divisions being distinguished by type of different sizes, the main 

 sections sometimes consisting of two or three numbered para- 

 graphs. This arrangement allows a most detailed reference with- 

 out the use of long or complicated indications. In the matter of 

 pronunciation the reviser makes no reference to what is known as 

 the English method, for the reason, he says, that " the time seems 

 ripe for sparing the teacher the necessity of choosing between a 

 system accepted by the scholarly world as substantially correct, and 

 one which, though still somewhat sheltered by a conservative tra- 

 dition, makes the mastery of quantity and even of word-formation 

 unnecessarily difficult. 



The third declension is made less of a stumbling-block to young 

 learners by grouping the consonant-stems simply according to their 

 behavior toward the letter s, and by presenting the /-stems in a 

 progressive series, showing different stages in the absorption of 

 consonant-stem forms. Examples in the use of the subjunctive 

 mood have been supplied with unusual copiousness, in the behef 

 that the contemplation of examples is the surest way to acquire a 

 feeling for the subtle differences between the subjunctive and the 

 indicative. The reviser has evidently tried to keep in mind the 

 needs of the beginner, and, when it has been necessary to introduce 

 the results' of modern philological research, they are stated as sim- 

 ply and definitively as possible. At the same time the more ad- 

 vanced pupil is furnished with all that is essential to his work, both 

 at school and in college, until the time when an exhaustive gram- 

 mar becomes a necessity to him. The more difficult topics are 

 treated in such a way as to be clear, while leaving as little as pos- 

 sible to be unlearned when the pupil's study becomes more mature 

 and scientific. Thus, among many things, the growing custom of 

 German scholars in abandoning the character / is followed, while 

 the distinction between u and v is^retained. 



The exclusion from the present edition of a mass of details, such 

 as rare exceptions to rules and small irregularities in the linguistic 

 usage of the less-known Latin writers, has failed to reduce the size 

 of the book, because of the improvement in the size of the type 

 which the publishers have been good enough to make. The large 

 type, clear print, good paper, and neat binding make as good a 

 setting as the learned reviser could desire for the result of his 

 labors. 



Modern Heliographic Processes. By Ernst Lietze. New York, 

 Van Nostrand. 8°. 



The present book had its origin in a lecture delivered by the 

 author in 1885. On being requested to publish this lecture in the 

 form of a pamphlet, the author extended his studies and researches, 

 compiling the numerous recipes and suggestions scattered in jour- 

 nals and books, and ascertaining their value. The book is intended 

 for the use of engineers and draughtsmen, who are so frequently in 

 need of a good process for reproducing their drawings. After a 

 brief theoretical introduction on the chemical and physical action 

 of light, the author classifies the processes as processes with salts 



