December 21, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



ment of the fertile prairie region on tlie Sasl<atchewan advances, 

 these regions and their produce will become more valuable. It is 

 worth remarking in this place, that the region near the southern 

 limit of forests is far more valuable than the arid prairies near the 

 forty-ninth parallel, adjoining Dakota and Montana, which are 

 crossed by the Pacific Railroad. The political considerations which 

 have determined the southern location of this road will undoubt- 

 edly prove to have retarded the growth of the Canadian North- 

 West Territories. The information regarding the forest-covered 

 area on the Mackenzie River, north of Great Slave Lake, is very 

 scanty, and it appears doubtful whether the committee's views re- 

 garding its value as a pastoral area are justified. 



On the whole, it appears that the south-western portions of the 

 Mackenzie basin are far more productive than they were formerly 

 believed to be, and that they are capable of supporting a consider- 



pancy as that to which we refer, impossible any longer, for it brings 

 within the reach of every teacher and student in the land a scien- 

 tific and practical and modern treatment of the subject of memory 

 and its cultivation. Professor Harris, the editor of the series, pref- 

 aces Mr. Kay's book with an interesting introduction, in which he 

 sums up the result of the author's discussion. He savs, for ex- 

 ample, " Memory is not one faculty, so to speak, but a condition of 

 activity of all faculties. There is one memory of places, another 

 memory of the names of places ; one memory of persons, another 

 memory of the names of persons ; still another memory of dates ; 

 another of principles and causes ; and so on. The cultivation of 

 one species of memory may assist or it may hinder another kind of 

 memory, according as the mental activity by which the attention is 

 fixed on one subject aids or hinders the mental activity of the other 

 kind of memory" (p. vi.). We are disposed to think that Profes- 



Wooded, mostly rocky 

 and swampy. 



able population. The country is far from being rich, and, while 

 more promising areas are open to settlement, progress will be slow ; 

 but there can be no doubt that in course of time its prairies, woods, 

 and mineral resources will give support to thrifty communities. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



By David Kay. 



Memory : What it is, and how to improve it. 

 New York, Appleton. l6°. 



This volume, the eighth in the International Education Series, 

 is in some respects the most important and interesting yet issued. 

 We by no means underrate the value of Rosenkranz's ' Philosophy 

 of Education,' nor that of Mr. Brown's translation of Preyer's ' Die 

 Seele des Kindes ; ' for those works are broadening and stimulat- 

 ing, and should be read by all those teachers who are seeking to 

 perfect themselves m the philosophy of their profession and to ex- 

 tend their knowledge of the phenomena of the child-mind. But 

 Mr. Kay, in his treatment of memory, has had an opportunity to 

 discuss, in the light of modern physiological and psychological 

 research, a subject about which there has been a vast amount of 

 almost wilful misunderstanding and ignorance. The commanding 

 place which verbal memory occupies in the schools of to-day is a relic 

 of thg system of teaching current for the last five hundred years, 

 and is the result of permitting educational practice to lag far behind 

 psychological investigation. Mr. Kay's book makes such a discre- 



Hmit of ripening of 

 at, Barley, Potatoes. 



sor Harris does Mr. Kay an injustice in stating (p. .xiii.) that Mr. 

 Kay has not discussed the physiological side of memory with ref- 

 erence to the most recent special researches in physiological psy- 

 chology. To be sure, we find no reference to Wundt, Volkmann, 

 James Ward, Ebbinghaus, Fechner, or Meynert ; but Ribot is 

 quoted and referred to with great frequency, and we have also 

 noticed quotations from Michael Foster, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Mauds- 

 ley, George Henry Lewes, Bernstein, E. Hering, Miiller, Dr. L. 

 S. Beale, Helmholtz, Du Bois-Reymond, and others, who are cer- 

 tainly in touch with the most modern theories in the branch of 

 knowledge referred to. In fact, so far are we from agreeing with 

 Professor Harris, that we are disposed to think that the first four 

 chapters of Kay's book, which discuss 'Memory,' 'Matter and 

 Mind,' ' The Body,' and ' The Senses,' form the most accurate and 

 concise introduction to the study of physiological psychology- that 

 we have yet seen. 



Every reader will be struck with the number of the author's cita- 

 tions. They are more than one thousand in number, and are taken 

 from over two hundred authors. They in themselves would form 

 an interesting olla podrida of what has been said and written about 

 the subject with which the book deals. The author strikes at the 

 current misconception of memor)' in the first pages of his book, and 

 remarks (p. 13) that " a leading error that arises in regarding the 

 memory as a single faculty is the belief, that, in whatever direction 

 we exercise it, we improve it as a whole. This, however, is verj- 

 far from being the case. If we exercise it only in one direction, we 



