Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/432

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

family of Oceana is still growing, and will have a sovereign voice in the coming fortunes of mankind."

The Adirondacks as a Health Resort. Edited and compiled by Joseph W. Stickler, M. D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 198. Price, $1.

The purpose of this work is to show the benefit to be derived from a sojourn in the wilderness, in cases of pulmonary phthisis, acute and chronic bronchitis, asthma, hay-fever, and various nervous affections. The author regards it as a fact that climate plays a very important part in the treatment of certain morbid states of the system, particularly in catarrhal affections of the respiratory apparatus and various forms of nervous disease. He relates as of his own experience that he obtained immediate and permanent relief in bronchitis from a sojourn in the Adirondacks. He also met, while there, several invalids who, having been in a precarious state of health, had been similarly relieved during their sojourn. He accordingly requested various persons, who had tried a change of climate as a means of regaining health, to give him honest expressions of their experience while in the region of the Adirondacks. This book is compiled from their letters as they were sent to him.

What does History teach? By John Stuart Blackie. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 123. Price, 15 cents.

The substance of this book was delivered in two lectures before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, the first of which related to the lessons taught for the state, and the second to those taught for the Church. In the former category is the teaching that the family is the basis of the state and society. From the history of the downfall of Greece is drawn the lesson of failure and disaster brought about by the want of unity between the several states; from the fate of the Roman Republic that of the evil engendered by the perpetual conflict between the aristocracy and democracy. From these lessons and other examples, the author deduces a conclusion favorable to the security afforded by the English system, as preferable to what a democracy can offer; yet there may be an exceptional case in the United States, where "the experiment of a great democratic republic for the first time in the history of the world for Rome in its best times, as we have seen, was an aristocracy will be looked on by all lovers of their species with the most kindly curiosity and the most hopeful sympathy. Here we have the stout, self-reliant, sober-minded Anglo-Saxon stock, well trained in the process of the ages to the difficult art of self-government; here we have a Constitution framed with the most cautious consideration, and with the most effective checks against the dangers of an overriding democracy; here also a people as free from any imminent external danger as they have unlimited scope for internal progress. Under no circumstances could the experiment of self-government on a great scale have been made with a more promising start. No doubt they have a difficult and slippery problem to perform." To the Church are taught the lessons of avoiding controversy and of making religion practical.

Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Washington. Vol. III. November 6, 1883, to May 19, 1885. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 204.

The number and scope of the papers printed in this volume, and the breadth of the discussions upon them, show the Anthropological Society to be an active body and earnestly interested in its work. A considerable number of the papers relate to American anthropology, a branch of the science to which this society may properly devote special attention, and for the study of which it has great advantages in the inclusion among its members of so many persons who are or have been connected with the geological survey. Many of the papers and the discussions upon them relate directly or indirectly to the mounds and the mound-builders, and frequently call up the question whether the mound-builders were identical with our Indians, or were of an earlier and superior race. Much may be found here to have been said on both sides of this subject. Among the other papers are some by Mr. Lester F. Ward from the mental side of anthropological study; an address by Mr. E. B. Tylor on "How the