Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/437

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SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.
421

they were opposed; the "rustler" and "the wars of the range"; and finally the growth of settlements and the changing aspects of the country. The ten full page illustrations are based upon actual knowledge.

Prof. L. H. Bailey's Principles of Fruit Growing[1] is a comprehensive and thorough-going work, and appears to cover all the aspects of the subject. It does justice to the theoretical and scientific side, and is at the same time in the descriptions of the processes and appliances of fruit culture predominantly practical. The author begins with an Introductory Discussion, seeking a definition of a fruit, and finds it by enumerating the different kinds. They divide themselves into four classes, of tree fruits, vine, small, and herblike fruits, and twenty subclasses. Then he considers the geographical elements—temperature, moisture, soil, and parasite determinants—of fruit growing, the evolution of a fruit region, some economical aspects of the subject; The Location and its Climate, including site, windbreaks, and artificial protection from frost; The Tillage of Fruit Lands, their fertilization, the planting of fruit grounds, the secondary and incidental care of the plantation, diseases, insects, and spraying; and harvesting and marketing fruit. The origin of new varieties is briefly considered in the appendix, and a Bibliography of American Books on Fruit Growing is added. The author's style is direct and terse, and many of his paragraphs are very suggestive.

The great difficulty of dealing with children in disease has made this department of medicine a fertile field for the specialist. The popular notion that "almost any doctor will do for baby" is not borne out by experience. Instead of its being easier to treat a child than an adult, it is, as a matter of fact, quite the reverse, and great skill and preparation, one might almost say genius, are required for the making of a specialist in pædiatrics. Dr. Holt has given us a new work on this important subject.[2] He has aimed, by omitting much material which does not strictly pertain to children and which is fully treated in general medical works, to give a fuller account of the strictly infantile diseases. Another omission, which, however, seems of less doubtful propriety, is that of questions relating to operative surgery. Rather more space than is usual in a clinical work has been given to pathology. The illustrations are fairly numerous, and are for the most part original. The material, which "is largely a record of personal experience," was gathered from eleven years, continuous hospital service among young children. The work is divided into two parts. The first of these treats of the hygiene and general care of infants, and gives some rules regarding the growth and development of the body and the peculiarities of disease in children. The second part is divided into ten sections, Diseases of the Newly Born, and Nutrition being the first two section titles. The remaining sections take up in succession the diseases of the digestive, the respiratory, the circulatory, the uro-genital, and the nervous systems. Section eight deals with the diseases of the blood, lymph nodes, and bones, and section nine the specific infectious diseases. The last section is entitled Other General Diseases.

The last volume in The Contemporary Science Series to reach us is a treatise on The New Psychology,[3] by Professor Scripture, of Yale University. The rapid growth of popular interest in psychology and allied branches of study has produced a large recent increase in its literature, a great share of which, however, is rather doubtful science; the subject being one difficult of experimental investigation, and of so essentially personal a nature that a student only rarely succeeds in keeping his researches purely objective. Dr. Scripture takes up the study in a methodical way, using instruments and meters wherever possible, and succeeds in bringing a sort of order out of the chaos. He has aimed to show just what the new psychology is, and to make clear the fundamental ideas of the science. The first


  1. The Principles of Fruit Growing. By. L.H. Bailey. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 507. Price, $1.25.
  2. The Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. By L. Emmett Holt, M.D. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 1117. Price, $6.00.
  3. The New Psychology. By E.W. Scripture. Illustrated. Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 500. Price, $1.25.