Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/726

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

how to cause them, instead of serving exclusively the interests of the least numerous, the least industrious, and the wealthiest class, to be employed for the benefit of all. Against these evils, Providence has sent us competition, whose opposite is monopoly, another evil; and socialism, while it has not succeeded in regulating competition and keeping it from becoming anarchical, is powerless against monopoly, so that we see all reforms ending "now in hierarchical corporation, now in state monopoly, or the tyranny of communism." These contradictions and evils constitute a "long succession of torments" through which it was necessary that society should pass in order that the victory of intelligent and free labor might produce all its consequences. Still other necessities must be met, to disappear, until "the supreme necessity, the triumphal fact, which must establish the kingdom of labor forever," shall come at last.

The American Anthropologist. Quarterly. Washington: Thomas Hampson. Price, $3 a year.

With January, 1888, the Anthropological Society of Washington began the publication of this magazine as a continuation of the "Transactions" heretofore published, and for the additional purpose of affording a medium for recording the work of investigators in anthropology who are not members of the society. The first number contains four papers: "The Law of Malthus," by Dr. James C. Welling; "The Development of Time-keeping in Greece and Rome," by F. A. Seely; "Anthropological Notes on the Human Hand," by Frank Baker, M. D.; and "The Chane-abal Tribe and Dialect of Chiapas," by Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. Dr. Baker's paper is of a popular character, dealing with beliefs in the curative or magical virtue of the "dead hand," with palmistry, with expression in the hand, etc. The second number contains the annual address of the retiring president of the society, Major J. W. Powell, delivered March 16, 1886. This is followed by a review of Dr. Rink's "Eskimo Tribes," a paper on "Discontinuities in Nature's Methods," by Henry H. Bates, and "The Prayer of a Navajo Shaman," by Dr. Washington Matthews, with miscellaneous notes and news.

A Hand-Book of the Lick Observatory has been written by the director. Prof. Edward S. Holden (The Bancroft Company). The book contains a sketch of the life of James Lick, descriptions of Mount Hamilton, and the buildings and instruments of the Lick Observatory, information for intending visitors, a poem "To the Unmounted Lens," by A. V. G., together with chapters on the work of an observatory, telescopes, astronomical photography, clocks and time-keeping, and the principal observatories of the world. The text is illustrated with woodcuts.

A little book of Chemical Problems has been prepared by Dr. J. P. Grabfield and Mr. P. S. Burns, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Heath). The problems are classified according to the chemical principles on which their solutions depend. These principles are stated briefly at the head of each section, and the method of solving the problems is illustrated. The latter half of the volume is made up of examination papers, which consist partly of problems and partly of questions.

The three introductory lectures on The Science of Thought, by Prof. F. Max Müller, and the correspondence on "Thought without Words," all of which has been published in "The Open Court," are now issued in book form (The Open Court Publishing Company, 75 cents). The three lectures deal with "The Simplicity of Language," "The Identity of Language and Thought," and "The Simplicity of Thought." In the second of these the author sets forth his doctrine that it is impossible to think without words, which provoked the correspondence that is appended. The writers of these letters are Prof. Müller, Mr. F. Galton, the Duke of Argyll, Mr. George J. Romanes, and others.

It will be pardonable to give a little space to Law of Heat, by Mrs. Maria R. Hemiup (The author, Geneva, N. Y., 75 cents), with the view of dissuading others from wasting time and money as she has done in promulgating impossible theories in science. Twenty years ago Mrs. Hemiup hit upon a theory to account for the bursting of containing vessels by freezing water, differing from the one commonly accepted. The. present volume consists of her original newspaper article stating the theory, with some