* 
. The Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth Ave. 1896. Pp. xii, 258; price $1. 
1032 The American Naturalist. [December, 
This favorite work, easily understood, handy, and popular, including 
_all of Nuttall’s delightful descriptions of bird-life, which was some time 
since fully annotated by Montague Chamberlain, who added the birds 
not known in Nuttall’s time, will be found more useful and valuable 
than ever before, Mr. Chamberlain having again gone over the work 
with the greatest care, bringing the information down to date. 
Colored representations of the birds being desirable for amateurs and 
students, a series of twenty plates, containing one hundred and ten 
figures of birds, has been added to the present edition. The drawings 
have been mostly copied from those of Wilson, and may be relied on 
for accuracy, although in some instances the tints do not come up to 
the brilliancy of Nature. We recommend the book as the one for the 
family, where the strictly scientific side of ornithology is not the chief 
desideratum. We mean by this that the work is not devoted to the 
anatomy and physiology of birds, but is one by which the species may 
be identified, and where descriptions of their habits and geographical 
range may be found; all set forth in admirable style. 
Education of the Central Nervous System.’—This book is an 
endeavor to apply the most recent results of psychology and brain 
physiology to the theory of education. The author quotes from Donald- 
n and other well-known writers on the topography of the brain and 
localization of functions. In view of the close connection between cere- 
bral development and mental capacity, he advocates an education 
which shall develop all parts of the brain to the greatest possible 
extent. He recommends especially that children be trained to distin- 
guish every shade of sensation-difference, and to recall in vivid images 
the objects of every kind which they have experienced ; if such train- 
ing be begun early in life, the brain cells are better developed, and in 
after life our mental images are more numerous and more definite. 
Unfortunately the book is limited almost exclusively to a discussion 
of sensation and memory, leaving out of account entirely the higher 
rational processes. It becomes an appeal for an education which is 
fundamentally esthetic and literary, as distinguished from scientific. 
Book learning for children is decried, and teachers are urged to take 
their pupils out into the woods and fields, and have them learn from- 
frontispieces, and twenty colored plates, containing one hundred and ten figures 
of the most important land and water birds. 2 vols. Crown 8vo, Cloth, extra, 
gilt top, $7.50 wet; half crushed Levant morrocco, extra, gilt top, $13.50 net.— 
LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Publishers, 254 Washington Sreet, Bosto 
? The Education of the Central Nervous System, by R. P. Halleck. New York, 
