LITERARY NOTICES. 



853 



in high and normal schools. While too great 

 simplicity in treatment has been avoided, 

 care has been taken to preserve the logical 

 sequence of thought and to prevent the dis- 

 cussions from becoming unnecessarily ab- 

 struse and difficult. Examples have been 

 selected with special reference to variety in 

 combination and methods of reduction. 



In his Graduated Course of Natural Sci- 

 ence (Macmillan) Mr. Benjamin Loewy en- 

 deavors to place the fundamental facts of 

 physics and chemistry upon a purely experi- 

 mental basis. The principal subjects usu- 

 ally embraced by a school course in these 

 branches are arranged in a progressive man- 

 ner, " so that the pupil may be able to pro- 

 ceed gradually from that which is known, 

 simple, and easy, to that which is unknown, 

 complex, and difficult ; from that which is 

 near and within a young learner's perception, 

 to what is more recondite." It is also a part 

 of the plan to give no instruction but that 

 which is conveyed through experiments and 

 the immediate consequences of the phenom- 

 ena observed, as deduced by a chain of sim- 

 ple reasoning. The present volume (Part I) 

 of one hundred and fifty-one pages comprises 

 the first year's course for elementary schools 

 and the junior classes of technical schools 

 and colleges. 



The First Report of Mr. John C. Smock 

 (Charles Van Benthuysen & Sons, Albany), On 

 the Iron Mines and Iron- Ore Districts in the 

 State of New York, is based in part on the 

 answers by managers of mines to letters of 

 inquiry addressed to them, and partly on a 

 personal survey of the mining district. 

 Nearly all the mines were visited, and notes 

 of their geographical situation and geologi- 

 cal relations were obtained. The answers 

 to letters of inquiry furnished valuable data, 

 especially in the relations of the mines to 

 the iron-mining and iron-manufacturing in- 

 dustries of the country. Short notices of 

 the older mines and of some of the aban- 

 doned mine localities have been incorpo- 

 rated in the report. The paper is published 

 as " Bulletin " No. 1 of the New York State 

 Museum of Natural History. 



The Report, by Dr. George M. Dawson, 

 on an Exploration in the Yukon District, 

 Northwestern Territory, and adjacent North- 

 ern Portion of British Columbia, gives the 

 results of an expedition made in 1887, in 



the vast and hitherto almost unknown re- 

 gion in the extreme Northwest of British 

 America. The tract in question is bounded 

 on the south by the sixtieth parallel, forming 

 the northern line of British Columbia, on the 

 west by Alaska, on the east by the Rocky 

 Mountains and the one hundred and thirty- 

 sixth meridian, and on the north by the 

 Arctic Ocean. It derives its name from its 

 lying within the drainage-basin of the Yukon 

 River. It has an area of about one hundred 

 and ninety-two thousand square miles, or 

 nearly equal to that of France, greater than 

 that of the United Kingdom by seventy-one 

 thousand square miles, ten times that of 

 Nova Scotia, and nearly three times that of 

 the New England States. The report is ac- 

 companied by a map of the district and 

 northern British Columbia, in three sheets. 



Geonomy and Cosmonomia (J. B. Lip- 

 pincott Company) presents theories on the 

 origin of ocean currents and the growth of 

 worlds and cause of gravitation, by J. Stanley 

 Grimes, who is also the author of theories 

 in mental physiology that have been favora- 

 bly mentioned by such authorities as Dr. 

 McCosh, the Rev. Joseph Cook, and the late 

 Dr. G. M. Beard, and of a new view of the 

 nebular system. In Geonomy he sets forth 

 that the continents originated in the sink- 

 ing of the ocean basins beneath weights of 

 sediment, accompanied by compensatory up- 

 heavals, and were shaped by six pairs of 

 elliptical oceanic currents, the sedimentary 

 deposits of which caused the sinkings. In 

 Cosmonomia the condensation of ether is 

 presented as the cause of the growth of 

 worlds and of gravitation. 



Mr. H. H. Johnston's History of a Slave 

 presents a dark aspect of affairs in Arabo- 

 savage Africa. The author, who has ac- 

 quired fame as an explorer, and particularly 

 as the leader of an expedition for ascending 

 Mount Kilimanjaro, has attempted in it to 

 give a realistic sketch of life in the western 

 Soudan. The story is the outcome of some 

 of his own experiences, and is especially 

 based on what he has seen and heard when 

 traveling in North Africa, in the Niger 

 Delta, and on the Cross River. It does not 

 describe any particular series of events as 

 they actually occurred, but combines iso- 

 lated incidents such as are not unknown in 

 the country into a connected, consecutive 



