Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/580

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
564
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Weber, Gauss, Ampère, Volta, Ohm, Faraday, Watt, Joule, Dr. Werner von Siemens, Sir William Siemens, Daniell, and Von Jacobi. A sketch of Coulomb is also given, without a portrait, and the author doubts if one is extant. In each sketch is told how and when the name of the subject was adopted for an electrical unit. A chapter by Prof. H. S. Carhart on Modifications of the Practical Electrical Units, is added, in which it is pointed out that, since there are three units of resistance in use, there are accordingly three modifications of all units depend ing upon this.

Psychological investigators will be interested in Prof. Joseph Jastrow's essay on The Time-Relations of Mental Phenomena, published in the series of Fact and Theory Papers (Hodges, 50 cents). The paper defines and analyzes simple and complex reactions, describes the methods of experimentation that have been devised by a number of investigators, and gives two tables—one of simple, the other of complex reaction times—from the observations of Cattell, Berger, Münsterberg, Kries and Auerbach, Merkel, and others. Various conditions affecting the times of simple reactions, and such as affect distinction, choice, association, and other elements of complex reactions, are discussed, and a classified bibliography is appended.

A little manual on Maps and Map-Drawing, by William A. Elderton, has been issued in Macmillan's Geographical Series (Macmillan, 35 cents). It describes briefly various modes of surveying, and tells some of the things that can be learned from globes—among them the explanation of great-circle sailing. In the chapter on mapdrawing the several projections are described; contouring, hachuring, and mezzotint shading are taken up; and a few directions for the use of maps are given. A short chapter on copying maps is included; but the author does not deem this as important as the drawing of memory maps. The latter subject he, accordingly, treats more fully, giving directions for drawing a memory map roughly, taking France as an example; also for doing more careful work, using England and Wales as the subject; and for a rough map of the world on Mercator's projection.

An address on The Future of Agriculture in the United Stales, by Dr. Peter Collier, of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, is devoted to the exhortation of farmers to study and put more intelligence into their work, and to the enforcement of the thesis that "we have not yet begun to approach the limit of even profitable production upon our lands."

A new monthly periodical, called the Educational Review, is to be begun in January, to be published by Henry Holt & Co. Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia College, President of the New York College for the Training of Teachers, will be its editor, and will have as his associates head-master E. H. Cook, of Rutgers Preparatory School, New Brunswick, N. J.; Dr. William H. Maxwell and Dr. A. B. Poland, superintendents of schools in Brooklyn and in Jersey City. The University, the Preparatory School, and the public schools will thus be represented in its editing. The enterprise starts with the approval, attached to its prospectus, of some hundred leading educators.

Poet Lore, a monthly magazine, devoted to Shakespeare, Browning, and the comparative study of literature (Poet Lore Co, 1602 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia), Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, editors, is a literary periodical of the highest order. Besides the two authors specially named, recent numbers have contained studies of the Provençal poets, by Miss M. L. Elmendorf; English and German Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by Prof. Oswald Leidensticker; Shelley; the Alkestis; Dante; The Russian Drama, by Nathan Haskel Dole; and other papers, which define the scope of the publication as a sufficiently broad one to make it acceptable to all cultivated readers. The November number contains a study of Browning's "Childe Roland." Next year, in lieu of the July and August numbers, double numbers will be published in June and September, each containing a foreign work of the first order, little known, but destined to awaken strong interest. The contents will be increasingly in the direction of comparative criticism. Price, 25 cents a number; $2.50 a year.

G. P. Putnam's Sons publish, in the Story of the Nations Series, Switzerland, prepared