Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/421

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SKETCH OF PAUL BERT.
407

la Sensitive" (Researches on the Movement of the Sensitive Plant); "Leçons sur la Physiologie comparée de la Respiration" (Lessons on the Comparative Physiology of Respiration), 1869; "Recherches expérimentales sur l'Influence que les Modifications exercent sur les Phénomènes de la Vie" (Experimental Researches on the Influence which Modifications exercise on the Phenomena of Life), 1874; "La Science expérimentale" (Experimental Science), 1878; "La Morale des Jésuites" (The Morals of the Jesuits), 1880; "Leçons, Discours et Conferences" (Lessons, Talks, and Lectures), 1880; "Leçons de Zoölogie professées à la Sorbonne" (Lessons in Zoölogy taught at the Sorbonne), 1881; "La première Année d'Enseignement scientifique: Sciences naturelles et physiques" (The First Year of Scientific Knowledge: Natural and Physical Sciences), 1882; "L'Instruction civique à l'École" (Civic Instruction at School), 1882; and "Discours parliamentaires" (Parliamentary Addresses), 1882. For many years he furnished a scientific feuilleton to M. Gambetta's journal, "La République Française," The "First Year of Scientific Knowledge" has been translated into English, and is published by D. Appleton & Co. It is intended for children beginning to study science, and has probably no superior in suitableness for that purpose. It has proved an extraordinarily popular book in France, where it is said to have made the author's name known to a vast number of persons who knew nothing of his eminence either in science or in politics.



Professor Archibald Geikie names four obvious sources of information regarding former conditions of the land: the testimony of historical documents; the names of places; tradition; and geological evidence. The historical testimony is not always direct, but is often very strong by incidental reference; and of this character are the allusions in poems and romances. Numerous local names which have now lost significance or seem inappropriate, are found upon analysis to have been descriptive, at the time, of the places on which they were conferred. So tradition, when well sifted, often throws light upon mooted points. Geological evidence is the best, the most accurate, the most lasting, and goes farthest back.

Some excellent maxims are given in a book on "The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life," by Mr. Gambler Parry. On "The Purpose and Practice of Fine Art," the author says that "fine art comes of the union of love and labor, for without love it has no sufficient motive, and without labor it can have no success." The first step in a student's life, he adds, "is to divest his mind of all idea that genius can dispense with labor." A glaring fault of much of the work of the day is rebuked in the precept, "Of all the vices which pollute the source and thwart the progress of fine art, the striving after novelty is among the worst." Impatience and fickleness of purpose are condemned in "the genius most precious to mankind is continuous."