Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/873

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SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.
851

its treatment of the various groups. This volume is unfortunately devoid of the latter qualification, but does contain a number of reproductions from actual photographs of the living forms; some of them actually very good and others very bad, but all of them remarkably good when one considers the great difficulties in the way of photographing the living animal in its native woods. These pictures and Dr. Shufeldt's facility in presenting scientific facts in a readable and entertaining form no doubt help to justify the book.

The State Geologist of Indiana, W. S. Blatchley, informs us, in his Twenty-first Annual Report of the Department of Geology and Natural Resources, that abandoning, for the most part, "the unscientific method of county surveys, which is impeded by artificial boundaries having no relation to geological conditions," he has adopted that of taking up each of the great natural resources of the State, and preparing a monograph thereon, based upon actual field investigation. The present report contains papers by him and his assistants upon the natural resources of the State, the petroleum industry, composition of coals, the Black Slate or Genesee Shale of New Albany, Indiana Caves and their Fauna (finely illustrated), the Geology of the Middle and Upper Silurian Rocks of Clark, Jefferson, and neighboring counties, the Bedford Oölitic limestone (the famous building stone), natural gas, mines, oils, the geology of Vigo County, and the uncultivated ferns, fern allies, and flowering plants of the same county. The report is illustrated by maps and plates.

A lecture on The Protestant Faith, or Salvation by Belief, read on various occasions before the Young Men's Christian Union by Dwight Hinckley Olmstead, is published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, with an introduction on the Limitations of Thought. It is a criticism of the Protestant principle of freedom in thought, and maintains that belief is involuntary, and therefore compulsory.

In preparing the second edition of his book on The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire, the author, Dr. James Weir, has incorporated in it a considerable amount of additional evidence in support of his theory, has verified all references, has endeavored to eliminate unnecessary material, and has divided the work into three parts. He has also added to the volume several other essays in which psychical problems are considered. Of the main work, the first part relates to the origin of religious feeling, which is believed to have been first material and prompting to propitiatory offerings. The second part is devoted to Phallic Worship, which, the author argues, dates from a very early period, has been universal, and has survived, even in some parts of Europe, in one form or another, to a very recent period; and the general subject, as defined in the title of the book, is treated in the third part. Dr. Weir's theory was first announced in a medical journal in New York in 1894; the first edition of this book was printed in June, 1897, and the second edition was all written and in the hands of the publishers in August, 1897—all before another book on the same subject appeared, in October, 1897.

The King's Daughter and the King's Son, "a fairy tale of to-day," by Agatha Archer, was written, as we learn from the title-page, by a King's Daughter in the summer of 1896. It declares its part to be "to conspire with the new works of new days." It presents subjects of vital social relations from a new point of view, and aims to enforce the precept that women should be given time and opportunity before marriage to understand clearly what marriage means to them. (Fowler & Wells Company, publishers. Price, $1.)

Physical Problems and their Solutions, by A. Bourgougnon (D. Van Nostrand Company's Science Series), presents a number of problems classified under the headings corresponding to the different divisions of physics to which they are related, and prefaced by such explanations as render their meaning clearer; also problems which have been set at examinations by the University of the State of New York. The solutions of some of the problems are given, and in cases where similar problems have already been treated, references to such solutions have been made.

The author, D. K. Tenney, of a paper entitled The Cooling Universe Refuted: the Earth not Born of the Sun, aiming to awaken inquiry on the subjects treated of, seeks to