274 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 305 



conveyance of historical truth, and never leaves the reader in doubt 

 as to the author's meaning. The result of these qualities is that 

 the book presents a large amount of information in a plain and 

 easily understood form ; and, though it contains a great many de- 

 tails, they appear in the main as essential parts of the narrative, 

 and not as isolated and insignificant facts. 



Mr. Fiske opens his work with an account of the negotiations for 

 peace between Great Britain and the United States, and then goes 

 on to describe the condition of the several States at the time, 

 and the political changes that took place in them after the attain- 

 ment of their independence. The most important parts of the 

 book, however, are the third and fourth chapters, dealing with the 

 general state of affairs in the years succeeding the peace, the alarm- 

 ing tendency towards anarchy, and the utter inadequacy of the 

 Confederation to furnish a stable government. Mr. Fiske makes 

 it perfectly clear, that, if things had been left to take their own 

 course, the Confederation would in a short time have broken up, 

 and that it was the gradual but sure perception of this fact that 

 paved the way for a stronger central government. The prejudice 

 at first existing against such a government was dissolved by the 

 logic of events, and then the good sense and patriotism of the 

 people came to the rescue. Such a Constitution as ours, however, 

 could not have been framed except by men of the highest political 

 genius, and even the soberest thinkers will not regard Mr. Fiske's 

 encomiums upon them as exaggerated. In his account of the Fed- 

 eral Convention, however, the author seems to us to have given too 

 little attention to what is really the essential feature of our system 

 of government. The most vital and most original part of the Con- 

 stitution is the division of powers between the State and the Fed- 

 eral governments, and it is also the most perfect part ; yet Mr. 

 Fiske has less to say about this part of the scheme than about any 

 other. But there is little to criticise in the book, and we cannot 

 but hope that its author will give us other works of a similar char- 

 acter, and that other historical writers will come more and more 

 to follow the same method of treatment. The American people 

 need all the political instruction they can obtain, and books dealing 

 with history, as this book does, in a philosophical manner, are 

 among the best of political teachers. 



Astronomywith an Opera-Glass. By G. P. Serviss. New York, 

 Appleton. 8'^. $1.50. 

 The greater part of the matter composing this volume appeared 

 originally in a series of articles published in The Popular Science 

 Monthly. The author points out the interesting phenomena of the 

 heavenly bodies that are visible, with little assistance from optical 

 instruments, and thus gives an interesting and valuable introduc- 

 tion to the study of astronomy. Although nothing has been de- 

 scribed as visible that cannot readily be seen by means of an opera- 

 glass or a small field-glass, enough of the discoveries made by 

 means of powerful telescopes has been stated to lend due interest 

 to the subject, and to instigate the observer to further studies. The 

 book has been written for the purpose of being a guidance to the 

 observer. For this reason the matter has been arranged according 

 to objects visible in each season, the stars of spring, summer, au- 

 tumn, and winter each being treated in one chapter. Observations 

 of the moon, the planets, and the sun are described in the last 

 chapter of the book. In an introduction the requirements of a 

 good opera-glass are set forth. The work is well adapted to ex- 

 citing interest in astronomy, and imparting such knowledge of the 

 heavenly bodies as must form the foundation of intelligent study of 

 the results obtained by means of powerful telescopes. 



American Weather. By A. W. Greely. New York, Dodd, 

 Mead, & Co. 12°. 

 The object of the present work is to give clearly and simply, 

 without the use of mathematics, an idea of meteorology. The in- 

 troductory chapters treat briefly the methods of measuring atmos- 

 pheric pressure, temperature, and other meteorological phenomena, 

 while the rest of the book is a detailed climatology of the United 

 States. The various phenomena are fully discussed, and illustrated 

 by numerous maps, which convey a peculiar interest to the book. 

 The vast amount of material collected by means of the Signal Ser- 

 vice and the State meteorological services has been made use of, 



and makes the book a very complete and comprehensive review of 

 the climatology of the United States. The work is not merely a 

 compilation of the work of other authors, but General Greely fre- 

 quently takes occasion to put forward his own views, particularly 

 in the chapters on storm-tracks. The principal merit of the book 

 is the concise and clear treatment of the matter, which will enable 

 every one interested in meteorological phenomena to understand 

 the peculiarities and diverse character of American climate in vari- 

 ous parts of the country. We hope it will contribute towards 

 creating a greater appreciation of meteorology, and of its impor- 

 tance to the interests of American agriculture and industries. Some 

 of the maps are particularly well adapted to show these applica- 

 tions of meteorology : among them we mention the maps of first 

 and last killing frosts and the maps showing continuance of mean 

 daily temperatures above 32° and 50°. The book forms a handy- 

 volume. It is well printed and illustrated, and is an excellent 

 treatise on American weather. In the clearness of its method, it 

 may be compared to Mohn's well-known ' Elements.' 



The Writer's Handbook. Philadelphia, Lippincott. 12°. $2.50. 



This book consists of three distinct parts, written apparently by 

 three different writers. All the writers are evidently British ; but 

 who they are, nothing on the titlepage, or elsewhere in the book, 

 enables us to say. The first part of the volume is an elementary 

 treatise on composition and rhetoric, with a series of extracts illus- 

 trating the history of English style. The matter of this part is in 

 the main good ; though the author, like most rhetoricians, dwells 

 too much on the merely mechanical qualities of style, and too little 

 on the moral and intellectual ones. The subject of figurative 

 language, too, is insufficiently treated, the important figures me- 

 tonymy and synecdoche being wholly neglected. But the author's 

 remarks on style, though covering but a portion of the ground, are 

 pretty good as far as they go. They will not help the young 

 writer much in acquiring the good qualities of style ; but they will, 

 if heeded, enable him to guard against many defects. The author's 

 own style is not in all respects a model ; for, though it is correct 

 and clear, it has a certain mechanical character, and some para- 

 graphs read like a succession of aphorisms. The samples of Eng- 

 lish prose are not always such as we should have chosen ; for, 

 though they illustrate fairly well the history of style, some of them 

 are by no means models of good style, and for learners this latter 

 consideration is the more important. The second part of the book 

 is another treatise on composition, only one-third as long as the 

 first, but superior in quality. It covers but a portion of the ground 

 usually occupied by such works ; the subject of figures, for in- 

 stance, being omitted altogether. But it sketches in plain though 

 brief terms the leading qualities of style, and gives some useful 

 hints as to the best mode of acquiring them. The third and con- 

 cluding part of the book is confined to the subject of letter-writing ; 

 and it seems rather out of place in this collection, for, though it 

 may be useful to those who write nothing else than letters, it can 

 hardly be of much service to those who have read the other parts 

 of this book. 



The Death-Blo^di to Spiritualism : being the True Story of the 

 Fox Sisters as revealed by the Authority of Margaret Fox 

 Katie and Catherine Fox fencken. By REUBEN BriGGS 

 Davenport. New York, G. W. Dillingham. 16°. 50 

 cents. 



The last phase in the sad but ridiculous story which this volume 

 tells is perhaps the pleasantest, or, better, the least displeasing. 

 Forty years after two mischievous girls in a lonely country house 

 undertook to frighten their mother by a series of midnight tricks, 

 the same girls, now as mature women, confess to the world that 

 the unparalleled psychic epidemic to which their pranks gave rise is 

 all a fraud. The raps interpreted by credulous folk as the answers 

 of inquiries to departed spirits are nothing less homely than the 

 dislocations of the great toe. Beginning these raps as children in- 

 nocent of the uses to which they were put, spurred on to deeper, 

 and deeper mischief by the marked attention given to them by 

 weak-willed believers and the money-making proclivities of an 

 elder sister, they soon found themselves the centre of an ever-in- 

 creasing throng of enthusiasts, and in a position where it was dif- 



