Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/143

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LITERARY NOTICES.
133

volume includes, also, notes to the first two books of Euclid, and added propositions.

Prof. Proctor has published, also, Easy Lessons in the Differential Calculus (Longmans, 90 cents), suggested, like the preceding book, by his own experience when a student under clumsy and unpractical teaching. In his treatment of the subject, he aims to show the need of a method of calculation dealing with variable quantities, and how such a method is to be used in practice. The integral calculus he has treated as a department of the differential.

Prof. W. G. Peck has added to his mathematical series an Elementary Treatise on Analytical Mechanics (Barnes, $1.65), which is intended to embrace all the principles of this science that are needed by the student of engineering, architecture, and geodesy. The methods and arrangement of the book are based on the author's long experience in teaching at the School of Mines, Columbia College.

The nineteenth edition of Nystrom's Pocket-book of Mechanics and Engineering (Lippincott, $3.50) has been revised and corrected by Prof. William D. Marks, who has added an elementary article on dynamic electricity, and one on the expansion of steam. In the form of notes, the reviser has stated some opinions of his own which differ from those of the author, and has given references to the literature of certain topics.

Higher Ground, by Augustus Jacobson (McClurg, $1), suggests a means of settling the labor question, which has become so troublesome. The author states the difficulty in a few pages, and then names as the remedy the extension of manual training to all the public schools of the country. He would meet the expense by a graduated succession tax. The latter half of the volume contains much information in regard to the courses and results of the training-schools in St. Louis, Chicago, Toledo, and elsewhere.

Another book which claims to solve the same problem is Labor, Capital, and Money: Their Just Relations, by C. C. Camp (D. W. Lerch, Bradford, Pa.). The author maintains that "the theory of Ricardo's law of distribution, and its modern renovation by Mr. George," are entirely fallacious. He charges the current commercial disturbances to the wrong use of money, and prescribes as a remedy the issuing of money in such volume as to reduce interest to the percentage of advancing wealth.

The Old South and the New, by William D. Kelley (Putnam, $1.25), consists of a series of letters describing the industrial and social condition of the people of the Southern States in 1887, as contrasted with their condition in 1867. The general tone of the book confirms the recent reports of wonderful enlivenment in the farm and garden districts of Florida, in the coal and iron country, and the new manufacturing cities of the South, while some mistakes that have been made are also pointed out.

Free Rum on the Congo: What it is doing, by William T. Hornaday (Women's Temperance Publishing Association, Chicago), concerns a question of vital interest to the friends of humanity, which is occupying a large degree of attention in all civilized nations. It is that of the unrestricted importation of liquors into Africa, which, under the license allowed by the Berlin agreement constituting the Congo Free State, has grown into a business of enormous proportions. The extent of it is shown by the grand total of 10,377,160 gallons—most of it adulterations of the vilest character—which were shipped thither in 1885 from five countries. The evils inevitable under such a traffic do not need to be described or named. Their magnitude is incalculable, and their effects are likely to endure through many centuries.

Slav or Saxon, by William D. Foulke (Putnam, $1.25), is a study of the growth and tendencies of Russian civilization, in which are briefly described the territory and the people of Russia, and the military autocracy, with sketches of Russian conquests, the history of Russia, the reforms of Alexander II, and the present despotism. The author urges Americans to give their moral support to England in the collision with Russia which is prophesied to take place in Asia.

The first number of a journal named Congress (The Congress Publishing Company, $1 a year) comes to us from Washington. Its purpose in life seems to be the dissipation of that troublesome surplus in the United States Treasury, for nearly everything which it proposes to advocate involves