Q6 



SCIEJSrCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 180 



certainly going to great extremes to say, that, 

 "without this definiteness of idea, no knowledge 

 of the slightest value can exist." However, no 

 harm would probably be done by this excess of 

 what is certainly in itself a merit, were it not 

 that the constant endeavor to insure the student's 

 good grip of his tools throws into the background 

 all considerations of elegance, and often inter- 

 feres with unity of treatment and a harmonious 

 development of the subject. In these features. 

 Professor Minchin's work leaves much to be de- 

 sired ; but its comprehensiveness, the fulness and 

 clearness of its explanations, and its richness in 

 examples, make it extremely valuable both as a 

 text-book and as a work of reference. Its use- 

 fulness in the latter capacity has been increased 

 by the addition of an alphabetical index. 



ROYCE'S CALIFORNIA. 



This work is the seventh in the series of 

 ' American commonwealths,' now in course of 

 publication under the editorship of Mr. Horace E. 

 Scudder. The author, who is already known to 

 the readers of Science, is a native of California ; 

 and his work, as he himself tells us, has been a 

 labor of love. It deals but slightly with the early 

 history of the country, when it was under Mexi- 

 can rule, but takes up the subject at the time 

 when our government was seeking to gain posses- 

 sion. This was in 1846 ; and the work closes with 

 the final establishment of order in the state in 

 1856, thus covering a period of ten years. 



The work is properly divisible into two parts, 

 the first treating of the conquest of the country 

 by the United States, and the second of the politics 

 of the state itself after the war was over. The 

 reviewer is obliged to say that the book has grave 

 faults of style and treatment, particularly in the 

 earlier part. The style is verbose, and the chap- 

 ters that treat of the conquest are carried to such 

 a length that few persons will have the patience 

 to read them through. 



Mr. Eoyce, like most other people, regards the 

 Mexican war and its accessories as little creditable 

 to the American nation ; though, of course, he 

 recognizes the good results that have actually 

 flowed from it. He thinks, too, that we might 

 have got California by peaceful means, or at least 

 with the consent of its inhabitants, if we had pur- 

 sued the right coiu-se ; and that we failed in this, 

 he thinks is due to the misconduct of some of our 

 military and naval officers. He is specially severe 

 on Captain Fremont, whom he regards as mainly 

 responsible for the fighting that occurred in Cali- 



American commonwealths. California. By Josiah 

 RoYCE. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin di Co., 1886. 16°. 



fornia, and consequently for the animosities and 

 race-hatreds that it engendered. 



In the fourth and fifth chapters, the author 

 treats of the ' struggle for order ' between the law- 

 abiding citizens on the one hand, and the criminal 

 elements on the other. Congress having neglected 

 to provide a permanent territorial government for 

 California, the people met of their own motion in 

 the autumn of 1849, and organized as a state, 

 which was soon after admitted into the union. 

 When this had been done, however, the struggle 

 with the lawless elements of society was only just 

 begun ; and it took seven years longer to reduce 

 the whole state to an orderly condition. The 

 causes of the long continuance of social disorder 

 were, in Mr. Eoyce's opinion, two, — the general 

 sense of irresponsibility due to the irruption of a 

 crowd of fortune-hunters ; and the animosity of 

 the American settlers toward the Mexican inhabit- 

 ants on the one hand, and foreigners on the other ; 

 to which we would add the political incapacity of 

 the Mexican inhabitants themselves. 



In his last chapter the author treats briefly of 

 the land question in California. When our gov- 

 ernment took possession of the country, there 

 were many tracts of land the ownership of which 

 was doubtful, and this would have caused much 

 difficulty in any case. But our people saw fit to 

 treat the ownership of all tracts as doubtful, and 

 compelled the landholders to prove their titles in 

 the courts as a prerequisite to having them recog- 

 nized. The courts, however, sustained the vested 

 rights of the proprietors ; and Mr. Royce thinks 

 that the whole history of California "has illus- 

 trated the enormous vitality of formally lawful 

 ownership in land." 



According to official statistics, it appears, 

 says the Journal of the Society of arts, that on 

 the 31st of December, 1881, 382,131 persons were 

 engaged in manufactories in Italy. Of these, 

 219,844 were spinners (69,447 being children) ; 

 77,779, weavers (13,638 children) ; and in printing 

 15,499 (618 children) were employed. In 1876 

 there were 229,538 weavers who worked at their 

 own homes, chiefly in Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, 

 Apulia, and the Marche of Ancona. 



— Nature states that during the present sum- 

 mer a university will be opened at Tomsk, in 

 Siberia, the first of its kind in this part of the 

 Russian empire. At first it will consist of two 

 faculties, — an historical-philological one and a 

 physical -mathematic. It already possesses a 

 library with fifty thousand books, a very valuable 

 paleontological collection, presented by Duke 

 Nicolaus of Leuchtenberg. 



