BOOK REVIEWS.

OUR HEREDITY FROM GOD: CONSISTING OF LECTURES ON EvoLUTION. By E. P. POWELL. Fifth edition. 12mo. Pp. x+443. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

A particularly forceful book on evolution from the beginning, with a description of "life stuff" without form, yet endowed with formative substance, ab initio, for every living thing.

The subject is presented in three parts: A summary of the leading arguments in favor of evolution, as accounting for structural variety; the commonality of life between all creatures, and how definitely the links in a consecutive development of life have been. established; and the process of evolution after man is reachedan effort to show that there is not only one evolution of life, including man and animals, interlinked in origin and in their progressive changes, but that human history, its religions, morals, arts, culminating in universal ethical laws, is also a subject of evolution. These several parts are subdivided into comprehensive but concentrated lectures or essays on the contributive conditions in detail.

While the author holds, prefatorily, that, "No religion but that of evolution can end anywhere but where it begins, in a chaos of creative purposes thwarted and disrupted, and in an eternal struggle to amend a shattered Divine plan," nevertheless, in the lecture "Wanted, Adam," "Evolution does not deny that in us is the revelation of Infinite purpose; nor does it cut us off from hope beyond that of our animal inheritance. It reveals only our immediate origin; but there is in us an hereditary undeniable of a sort not wholly animal. If man has come up from the cave, where he prowled with the hyena and the bear, and if he has left an ancestry of arboreal antecedents, until his brow reflects the dawn of eternity, may he not wisely believe that before him is his real destiny?" But the author's showing of the "co-operation (?) between the two kingdoms of life," animal and vegetable, to this end is, it strikes us, wholly inconsistent with the instance of antagonism which he cites (p. 200), of man's contention with disease germs.

"The animal devours the vegetable, apparently as the superior; yet the air is filled with vegetable spores waiting a chance to settle upon and devour the animal. Terribly triumphant is the vegetable when, as typhoid, or as scarlet fever, or as black death, it sits upon the pestilence and depopulates, as it terrifies, cities and States."

It comprehends the relations of plants to animals generally, and to man in particular; the instincts and educational faculties of animals and their inter-relations in all their phases, and the relations of all, socially and physiologically, to man universally.

THE COST OF GOODS: A STUDY IN DIETARIES. BY ELLEN H. RICHARDS, Instructor in Sanitary Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 12mo., pp. 161. Price, $1. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

The gist of many treatises on food requirements and values for the different ages and conditions, from infancy to adult life, individually and collectively, for the nursery, school-life, brainworkers and laborers, hospitals, penal and pauper institutions; the general principles governing dietaries, groups and costs per person per day in the various conditions and circumstances. A book of extensive and practical utility insufficiently suggested by the title.

HANDBOOK ON SANITATION: A MANUAL OF THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL SANITATION. For Students and Physicians; for Health, Sanitary, Tenement-house, Plumbing, Factory, Food, and other Inspectors; as Well as for Candidates for All Municipal Sanitary Positions. By GEORGE M. PRICE, M.D., Medical Sanitary Inspector, Department of Health, New York City; Inspector New York Sanitary Aid Society of the Tenth Ward, 1885; Manager Model Tenement-houses of the New York Tenement-house Building Company, 1888; Inspector New York State Tenement-house Commission, 1895. 12mo. Pp. xii+317; 31 figures. Cloth, $1.50, net. Order through your bookseller, or copies will be forwarded, postpaid, by the publishers on receipt of the retail price. New York: John Wiley & Sons. London: Chapman & Hall, Limited. 1901.

A concise manual of sanitary knowledge adapted to sanitary inspectors' use, particularly from New York's field of view. It is appropriately and excellently illustrated with cuts and diagrams of the most recent devices and improvements in ventilation, house drainage, plumbing apparatus and tenement-house construction. Gives the methods of application of sanitary knowledge in municipal departments throughout the country with extracts from the laws, rules and regulations of New York and other municipalities. Hence it is well adapted to and commendable for sanitary practice generally.

THE CROWN OF THORNS: A STORY OF THE TIME OF CHRIST. By PAUL CARUS. Illustrated. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co.

The story purports to present the historical and ethical conditions of the origins of Christianity. It is fiction of the character of legend, utilizing materials preserved in both the canonical Scriptures and the Apochryphal traditions, but giving preference to the former. The religious milieu appears to be strictly historical, and is designed to show the way in which Christianity developed from Judaism through the Messianic hopes of the Nazarenes, as interpreted by the Apostle Paul of Tarsus. The book is elegantly illustrated by Mr. Eduard Biedermann. Pp. 73. Price, 75 cents, net.

REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION FOR THE YEAR 1899-1900. Vol. I. Pp. lxxx+1,280. Washington: Government Printing Office.

Total enrollment of schools and colleges for the year, 17,020,710, an increase of 282,348 pupils over the previous year. Of this number 15,443,462 were in public institutions. The average length of the above term for the year was 144.6 days. The enrollment 15 classified and tabulated, showing the per cent. of the enrollment to population in the divisions of the United States: North Atlantic, 17.82; South Atlantic, 20.91; South Central, 21.46; North Central, 22.16; Western, 19.70. And next follows the percentage of the States severally-26.39 (Utah) to 13.42 (Arizona). Average number of days' schooling given for every child 5 to 18 years in the United States 68.3; in the North Atlantic Division, 41.9; South Central Division, 41.2; North Central Division, 82.2; Western Division, 80.5. In the States severally, 107 (Massachusetts) to 21.9 (North Carolina).

Comprehensive chapters follow on the development and progress of educational systems generally and specifically; educational extension in the United States and dependencies.

The chapters on alcohol, in its relation to the sphere of schoolteachers: "Alcohol Physiology and Superintendence," by Prof. W. O. Atwater, of Wesleyan University, and "The Rôle of the School-Teacher in the Struggle Against Alcoholism," by A. Sluys, Director of the Brussels Normal School (a report of the Sixth International Congress Against the Abuse of Alcoholic Drinks, at Brussels, 1899), comprehend much useful information which all school authorities and teachers should have as a basis for practical deductions in the exercise of their duties, insomuch as to be worthy

of separate publication and dissemination as an offset to much. false teaching now in vogue. These essays go to the root of the subject. They tell the truth about alcohol, and show how that truth may and ought to be taught without misrepresentation. The volume altogether is replete with knowledge of practical importance to all institutions of learning, school authorities and teachers.

"THE RIGHT OF WAY;" A NOVEL. By GILBERT PARKER, Author of "The Seats of the Mighty," "When Valmond Came to Pontiac," etc. Illustrated by A. I. Keller. Pp. 420. New York: Harper & Brothers.

A forceful drama, impersonated with a mixture of the extremes of good and evil propensities, individually in Charley Steele, the leading character, and collectively in the rest, so planned, unfolded and exhibited as to test human courage under the most trying circumstances; and this is its chief virtue. The trend of the book altogether is singularly inconsistent with the title. There are many ways opened up, alluring to the reader on account of the freshness and brilliancy with which they are presented at the outset, as was the brilliancy of "Beauty Steele" at the opening of his career as a lawyer; but as was his way also at the last-disastrous and shocking-ways to be avoided. For the knowledge of these "The Right of Way" is deeply interesting and commendable.

THE PHYSICIAN'S VISITING LIST (Lindsay & Blakiston) FOR 1902. Fifty-first year of its publication. So well known and in such general use on account of its superior excellence as only to require announcement. It continues to maintain the long-since worked-out facile means for recording the daily work and the needful tables for ready reference, calendar, signs, weights and measures, doses, emergency methods, comparison of thermometers, period of utero-gestation, etc. It is issued in different styles, adapted to the record of 25, 50, 75 and 100 patients daily, with corresponding dates, and a perpetual edition without dates; also a monthly edition, in which name of patient need be written but once, the month's account being kept in one place, can be commenced at any time. Prices in the orders named for the numbers of patients, severally, $1, $1.25, $2, $2.25. Perpetual edition, for 1,300, $1.25; 2,600, $1.50. Monthly edition, $1. Leather cover, packet and pencil. P. Blakiston's Son & Co., Philadelphia.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

With its November number "The Century" begins a "Year of American Humor," by Prof. W. P. Trent, of Columbia University, with portraits of Lowell, Warner, Holmes, Harte, Hay, Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Stockton, Harris, Bunner, Field, Bill Nye, Riley, F. P. Dunne, George Ade, and a score or so of others who have successfully sought to tickle the risibilities of the American people. The humor in this issue of the magazine includes "Two Little Tales," by that most famous of living fun-makers and satirists, Mark Twain; "Songs of the Cheerful People," by Paul Dunbar; "Mr. Appleby's Vote," by Catharine Glen; "The Indiscretion of John Henry," a story of a woman's club, by Walter Sawyer; "More Animals," in picture and verse, by Oliver Herford; another of "Patrolman Flynn's Adventures," by Elliott Flower; apothegms by Carolyn Wells, and three full-page pictures of Don Quixote, as he appears to André Castaigne, Howard Pyle and A. I. Keller, respectively.

Another important departure in this number of "The Century" is the beginning of a series of papers on the Great West, to be contributed by Emerson Hough, author of "The Story of the Cowboy," and Ray Stannard Baker, author of "Our New Prosperity." Mr. Hough will describe, with illustrations by Frederick Remington, the heroic settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and their prodigious growth in wealth and population, taking the various sorts of transportation as a motif for his story. Mr. Baker will treat especially of the spreading of the settlers toward the Rocky Mountains and beyond. Mr. Hough's opening paper, "The Settlement of the West," is philosophic in grasp and picturesque in detail, and is accompanied by typical figure drawings, portraits and maps.

AMERICAN OPPORTUNITIES AND EDUCATION.

Hamilton W. Mabie contributes to the November number of the "North American Review" a masterly article, entitled "American Opportunities and Education," in which he discusses the essential meaning of the situation in which our country finds itself at the present moment, viewed in its relation to the historical development of the nation. Starting with the principle that, sooner or later, every experience must disclose its value in vital education, Mr.