makes probable every essential truth of supernatural Christianity. The apprehension by the writer of this, as the critical point in modern apologetics, demonstrates his clear vision; and the logical analysis to which he subjects the claims of Atheism, Materialism and Pantheism, shows him to be an acute and profound philosopher.

Books on Art.*

A FEW years ago it was not easy to find in our book stores elementary works upon art, except those written in a foreign language. The little papercovered series, published by the London colordealers, Winsor & Newton, were almost the only books of this kind within the reach of our art students. It is a pleasing sign of a wider interest that American publishers now find it worth while to print so many text-books of art.

nown.

The most important volume on our list is Miss Frothingham's translation of Lessing's "Laocoon." Some books suffer oblivion by reason of their reWe are all supposed to have read them, and, therefore, do not take the trouble to do so. Lessing's "Laocoon" should be studied by all cultivated persons, and yet of E. C. Beasley's translation, published in England in 1853, only a very few copies found their way to America; and we may be sure it has been little read here in any form. The whole ground covered by Lessing is, we may almost say, the whole question of art, as art. To a thorough classical equipment this author adds the keen perception of a great poet-then with the gusto of a born critic, he analyzes, compares, explains, and, in the end, places the reader in the way of reconstructing. It is not until the entire essay is well read that his elaborate details are found, each bearing directly upon the main point-namely "the limits of the various expressions of art. The chief lesson of the book certainly was never more needed than to-day-that painting is out of place in poetry, and the literary element out of place in painting. It was a difficult piece of translation, and is well done, though Lessing's delicate sarcasm, like the fine irony of Heine, is apt to escape in the transfer from the German to a foreign idiom.

Charles Blanc, in the preface to his "Grammaire des Arts du Dessin," refers to the need, in France, of

*Lessing's Laocoon. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Grammar of Painting and Engraving. Translated from the French of Charles Blanc's "Grammaire des Arts du Dessin," by Kate Newell Doggett. With the original illustrations. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

The Old Masters and their Pictures. By Sarah Tytler. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Modern Painters and their Paintings. By Sarah Tytler. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Painters, Sculptors, Architects and Engravers, and their Works. By Clara Erskine Clement. With illustrations and monograms. Second edition. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

The Theory and Practice of Linear Perspective. From the French of V. Pellegrin, G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Paradoxes and Puzzles. By John Paget. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, Imported by Scribner. Welford & Armstrong.

a lucid résumé of all accepted ideas touching the arts of design. How much greater has been the want this side the Atlantic! Ignorance always answers your protest against some piece of bad taste with the reply, supposed to be unanswerable,-“Well, that is my taste; every man his own!" In vain you urge the existence of standards; of academies that judge of merit; of trained and honest critics who examine its reasons; of refined classes who take an intelligent interest in meritorious work. What have they to do with principles to whom art is a pleasure of the senses, limited only by the individual's accidental degree of culture, perhaps by a crude apprehension of beauty undeveloped by special training. It is evident that with ignorance there can be no argument. The only thing to be done is to do away with the ignorance-give the special training, and let the culture be no more accidental in art than it is in geography. There has been a strong movement in Boston and New York during the last ten years to counteract this almost universal plea of the indolent; and the most effective method has been adopted-that of giving elementary artistic instruction to the young. Our readers know something of the work in the schools of the Cooper Institute and the Academy of Design in New York. In the Boston High Schools the experiment seems to have been so far successful. There is much yet to be accomplished by these and other means. Meanwhile our critics fill our news

papers with guesses, and every reporter thinks himself competent to sit in judgment upon the work of a master. Worse than all, the artists themselves, accustomed to an uncultured public and an unreliable criticism,--slight education, and carry out, in the making of statue, picture and public building, the happy-go-lucky system which is the natural result of their surroundings. M. Blanc's book may not be sufficient for an entire art education. France and Germany have twenty books, not one of which a well-taught connoisseur can do without; and for the artist this work is hardly technical enough. But it is imbued with reverence (that virtue which we rule out in America), and cannot fail to convince the candid student of his own liability to error. It is itself candid, and not unduly devoted to any one school or man-a tendency which forms an element of dissolution in the teachings of so stimulating a writer as Ruskin; nor is it bound with the iron rings of a system which, in the works of a critic as eminent as Taine, fills you, from the outset, with an involuntary distrust. In style it is familiar and lucid, and though apparently written with ease, condenses a great deal of history, as well as criticism, into its three hundred and odd pages. Mrs. Doggett's work is carefully and agreeably done. It gives the impression of having been a labor of love; indeed the clearness of the French has such a charm for the translator, that sometimes she keeps altogether too literally to the idiom of the original.

The author of "Papers for Thoughtful Girls" could not fail to give a simple interest to any subject about which she undertook to write for young people. In The Old Masters" she has not allowed the charm of her subject to carry her too far into the romantic legends of their lives, and in “Modern Painters" personal impressions have not outweighed received authorities. In both, she has given the general verdict with a sincere attempt at fairness. Of course English modern art holds the largest place in the second volume, and she refers most frequently to Ottley, Ruskin, and Redgrave. In French painting her references are to Hamerton; in American to Tuckerman, so that in the latter department the artists of the last fifteen years are excluded. German art suffers most, however, as she mentions no schools but those of Overbeck and Kaulbach. Mrs. Tytler's style is not always fortunate-in the endeavor to be child-like she is sometimes absurd.

Mrs. Clement's book is a dictionary of sculpture and painting, especially useful for collectors and travelers. It includes all the great names except those of living artists, and has much valuable reference in regard to engravings in metal, and wood-cuts. When the interest in great art shall make such a book possible, we wish Mrs. Clement might undertake a dictionary of the drawings of the most interesting masters, with some account where these are to be found, their variations upon the same theme, etc.

of

Pellegrin's book on perspective is a convenient little volume, containing the few elementary rules by which the most elaborate linear problems may be worked out. The author has the sanction of the French Ecole des Beaux Arts, where the mechanical parts of art are more thoroughly understood than any where else in Europe.

Mr. John Paget's "Paradoxes and Puzzles" are principally historical and judicial, but the author throws in some "Essays on Art" at the end of his book, which may, at least, be called lively reading. There is an irritating dogmatism about Ruskin, which makes it agreeable to hear some one say " fiddlesticks," at the close of the great critic's edicts: and that is Mr. Paget's refreshing way. To be sure, we should be better pleased if the critic's critic, in offering a substitute for Mr. Ruskin's method for beginners, did not encourage the copying of Retsch's outlines-drawings which have just enough charm to allure the beginner into a pernicious

mannerism.

"The Heart of Africa."*

THE unexplored territory of the unknown continent is growing beautifully less, and the great geo

*The Heart of Africa. Three years' travels and adventures in the unexplored regions of Central Africa, from 1868 to 1871. By Dr. Georg Schweinfurth. Translated by Ellen E. Frewer, with an introduction by Winwood Reade. In two volumes. With maps and wood-cut illustrations. New York: Harper & Bros.

graphical problems which have perplexed the ages are finding, their solution, one by one. Strangely enough, the one, the solution of which has been longest and most industriously sought, is the one which is likely to be last determined. One source after another of the Nile has been reached by one after another of the various explorers who have risked life in their adventurous efforts. And yet the great river is a mystery still, and waits for one more enterprise, at least, to give a complete and conclusive answer to the question of its

source.

Dr. Georg Schweinfurth, whose great work, translated into English, has been put before the American public by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, must have the credit of discovering the source of one of the important branches of the White Nile, in the low mountain region, north-east of the Albert Nyanza; and of determining the water-shed by which the Nile basin is separated from the adjacent riversystem terminating in Lake Tsad. In this achievement he has rendered a geographical service of very great, though not of the greatest, value. We can appreciate the enthusiasm with which, after long months of patient and laborious exploration, along water-courses which tended always to the northward and the north-eastward, he came at length upon the great, broad river Welle, of which he had long heard the rumor, but which now his eyes beheld, and found it flowing surely and directly westward. That moment the limits of the great Nile basin, in one more section of its great circumference, were positively determined.

This was Dr. Schweinfurth's chief geographical discovery. And it must have been hard for him, after having accomplished so much and reached the very heart of the continent where the secrets of all its water-system are locked up, to be obliged to turn back without achieving the successes which were waiting to be won only a little way beyond. Between Schweinfurth's furthest point to the southward and Livingstone's furthest point to the northward, there is less than five hundred miles of unknown territory. The English traveler had reached the very border land of mystery on one side. The German traveler was close upon it from the other. In that five hundred miles the course of the great river Congo, which flows westward to the Atlantic, is waiting to be mapped out. In that five hundred miles is the missing link which is to prove whether Livingstone was, as he believed, upon the upper waters of the Nile, when he was following the stream which he had traced almost from the very fountains of Herodotus in its northward flow; or, whether that unknown river, by the side of which at last, he fell, tired out, and yielded up his weary life, was, (as the geographers almost with one voice maintain,) the Congo. To no one man, to no two or three men even, is to belong the glory of determining beyond all doubt this ancient question of geography. Only by degrees and grudgingly will

the great continent give up its mighty secret. Meantime, every approach to the complete discovery makes the uncertainty all the more intensely interesting and enticing.

Dr. Schweinfurth is, in some respects, the most fortunate of African explorers. He is still a young man; but he has lived for three years consecutively in the most deadly and inhospitable of savage countries without serious illness, and almost without serious peril from the hostility of the savage tribes among whom he journeyed and sojourned. The cannibals even, treated him as a man and a brother, did not disguise from him their little peculiarities of diet, made him at home in their simple, unconventional domestic life, welcomed him, we will not say to their hearth-stones, for that phrase might be misunderstood, but to their villages and fields and forests. His descriptions of the Niamniam,-the very name has, as it is spoken, a sound as of gnashing teeth, is full of interest. It may indicate a depraved and morbid taste on the part of the readers of books of travel, but, as a matter of fact, stories of well authenticated cannibalism are always popular, and exert an influence of dreadful fascination. Dr. Livingstone, in a private letter (never yet published) sent by Mr. Stanley's hands to an American correspondent (the late Mr. W. F. Stearns), speaks doubtfully of the Manyuema people among whom he journeyed, as, "if cannibals, not ostentatiously so." But about Dr. Schweinfurth's

Niam-niam there can be no doubt. And his narrative is, of course, all the more delightful, for that ostentatious certainty.

Concerning the race of dwarfs or pigmies, Dr. Schweinfurth has also much to say. And he was fortunate enough to secure the custody of a living specimen, whom he had hoped to bring in person with him on his return to Europe. But little Tikkitikki died before he ever saw the sea. Evidently, Africa will not reveal her secrets-will not let her wonders go, if she can help it.

Dr. Schweinfurth's style is straightforward and unpretending, but most readable. And the translation, except for an occasional inelegance, is all that could be desired. His geographical and ethnological researches were apparently incidental to the main object of his journey. He is by profession a botanist, and it was in the interests of that branch of science, particularly, that he conceived the enterprise of which these two stately volumes give the record. But the general reader will chiefly value the general information which the volumes contain, rather than the special details of scientific investigation. And it is as a book of travel that we have chiefly considered it, and give it cordial and emphatic commendation.

Agassiz.*

It means very little to say that the death of Agassiz was a loss to science, in the ordinary sense. Of course any branch of human knowledge must wait a little longer in its development, when so ardent and intelligent a votary ceases to cultivate it. But the position of that eminent savan among the scientists of this country was peculiar in this respect, that on the one hand a crowd of admirers will suppose that without him the sciences he pursued must be neglected or unfairly read, while on the other many thinkers will hold that in his departure an obstacle to their true interpretation is removed. Both will argue that they are right, because he maintained the successive creation of distinct species, and combated evolution. As regards that disputed doctrine, it would benefit people whose minds are fixed in the habit of satisfying themselves with words alone, to read Winchell's late clear exposition of the different senses in which it may be taken ("The Doctrine of Evolution," Harper & Brothers.) There is a doctrine of evolution which reduces the universe to unintelligent force, and reasons away a personal creator. There is another doctrine of evolution which regards the original endowment of simple force and matter, or of force alone, with the capacity to unfold into the marvelous web of the universe, as a grander act of creation than is a stated interference in producing species. Agassiz believed in neither doctrine, yet he might easily have adopted the latter, and still held the most orthodox views of theologians, if he could only have raised them to his level. As it is, though science loses much in the cessation of his earnest investigations, it loses more in his bold objections to extremes, and his obstinate resistance to those who persist in arraying it and religion against each other, while professing merely to disconnect them. He affords a curious illustration of the rapid advance of thought in our day. It was some centuries before any one dreamed of excusing Galileo for frightening the church by the assertion that the earth moves. Agassiz could say of himself twelve years ago, "I know that I have been considered by many persons an infidel, because I have not taken for my guidance, in the study of science, the dictum of certain creeds," and yet long before his death could hear himself reviled by one party for theological narrowness, and applauded by another as a champion of faith. The lectures here reproduced were delivered in 1862, and are devoted to the demonstration that the structure of animal life, in its plans and its gradation, denotes the constant working of a present intelligence.

* The Structure of Animal Life: Six Lectures, by Louis Agassiz. Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York.

Hay Fever.

IN 1868 Professor Helmholtz, announced the discovery of low organisms in the secretion of the nasal cavity of persons suffering from hay fever, and Prof. Biny, in a recent letter on the subject says: -I have suffered since 1847 from this catarrh, the attack coming on regularly in the hay season, and the specialty being that it ceases in the cool weather, but on the other hand, quickly reaches a great intensity on exposure to sunshine. It is attended by violent sneezing and a thin corrosive discharge. In a short time a painful inflammation of the mucous membrane and often of the skin of the nose supervenes, together with fever and headache. In a cool room these symptons are relieved, but there remains a soreness of the membrane, which after a time disappears.

The curious dependence of the disease on the season of the year, suggested to me the thought that organisms might be the origin of the mischief. In examining the secretions, I regularly found in the last five years certain vibrio-like bodies in it, which at other times I could not observe in my nasal secretion. They are very small, and can only be recognized with the immersionlens of a very good microscope. It is characteristic of the common isolated single joints that they contain four nuclei in a row, of which two are more closely united. Upon the warm objective-stage they move with moderate activity, partly in mere vibration, partly shooting backwards and forwards in the direction of their long axis ; in lower temperature they are very inactive. It is to be noted that only that kind of secretion contains them which is expelled by violent sneezings; that which drops slowly does not contain any. When I first saw the statement regarding the poisonous action of quinine upon infusoria, I determined at once to make an experiment with that substance, thinking that these vibrionic bodies, even if they did not cause the whole illness, still could render it much more unpleasant through their movements, and the decompositions caused by them. For that purpose I made a neutral dilute solution of the sulphate of quinine. I then lay flat on my back, keeping my head very low, and poured with a pipette about a teaspoonful into both nostrils. Then I turned my head about to let the liquid flow in all directions. The desired effect was obtained immediately, and remained for some hours. I could expose myself to the sun without fits of sneezing, and the other disagreeable symptoms coming on. It was sufficient to repeat the treatment three times a day, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, to keep myself quite free from the annoying symptoms.

An Ethnological Curiosity.

To the ethnologist the study of the peculiarities of different races is a matter of absorbing interest, and, at times, very singular fancies are discovered by those who examine into these matters. As an illustration we quote the following from the notes of an ethnological explorer among the groups of islands known as the Nicobars, about 150 miles south of the Andamáns. Speaking of the customs of the inhabitants, the writer says: " One of the most noticeable of these, and one which seriously affects the trade of the island, is the passion for old hats which, without exception, pervades the whole framework of society. No one is exempt from it. Young and old, chief and subject alike, endeavor to outvie each other in the singularity of shape no less than in the number of old hats they can acquire during their life-time. On a fine morning at the Nicobars it is no unusual thing to see the surface of the ocean, in the vicinity of the island, dotted over with canoes, in each of which the noble savage, with nothing on but the conventional slip of cloth, and a tall white hat with a black band, may be watched standing up and catching fish for his daily meal. Second-hand hats are most in request, new hats being looked upon with suspicion and disfavor. This curious passion is so well-known that traders from Calcutta make annual excursions to the Nicobars with cargoes of old hats, which they barter for cocoa-nuts, the only product of these islands; a good tall white hat with a black band fetching from fifty-five to sixty-five good cocoa-nuts. Intense excitement pervades the island while the trade is going on, and fancy prices are often asked and received. When the hats or the cocoa-nuts have at

length come to an end, the trader lands a cask or so of rum, and the whole population in their hats get drunk without intermission until the rum also comes to an end. It is curious that in far-away regions so profitable a market should be found for cast-off specimens of one of the most disagreeable symbols of civilization."

The Old or the New World?

THE recent expeditions for the geological exploration of the Western States have furnished results which tend to show that America has a better claim to the title of Old World than either Europe or Asia. Among the discoveries which have been made is the former existence of a series of great lakes between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. Surrounding these there was a flora and fauna of a tropical character, and in the lower strata which at intervals come to the surface, many gigantic fossils are found, not only great extinct pachyderms, of which we have made mention in a

former number, but also fossil turtles, elephants, mastodons, tigers, hyenas, wolves and camels.

Sex and Mind in Education.

"THE Fortnightly Review" contains an article on this subject by Dr. Maudsley, in which he assumes, on the authority of American experience, that the physical constitution of young girls is unequal to the strain of an ordinary school education, and that consequently the interests of the race demand that their instruction should have especial reference to their predestined duties as wives and mothers. As excessive stimulation of the mental faculties will quickly disturb the general health, the practical question to be decided by parents and physicians is, in each instance, the extent to which mental exercises may be permitted without interfering with a perfect parallel development of the other functions of the body. Whether differences in character and method of study should be made in accordance with the sex, depends on the extent to which the brain may be affected by differences that attend sexual organization; of these we are still ignorant regarding the details, though there can be no doubt of the existence of differences in cerebrostructure, just as there are differences in the types of mind.

Gigantic Cuttle Fish of the Northern Coast. PROFESSOR VERRILL assures us of the existence of gigantic cuttle fishes and squids on the North American Atlantic Coast. Of the latter he says there are at least two kinds. The body of one that came into his possession must have been fifteen feet long and nineteen inches in diameter, the ordinary arms about ten feet long and seven inches in diameter, and the two extensile arms of unknown length. Another with a body ten feet long, had extensile arms about forty-two feet in length. A smaller specimen, caught in herring nets in Logie Bay, about three miles from St. Johns, had a body more than seven feet long. The two tentacular arms were twenty-four feet in length and two and a half inches in circumference. The short arms were six feet long and ten inches in circumference at the base. Each of the long arms bears about one hundred and sixty suckers on the broad terminal portion, all of which are denticulated.

A New Motor.

A CURIOUS experiment in capillary attraction has recently been devised by M. Lippmann. It may be described as follows: Place in a saucer a globule of mercury an inch or so in diameter, and pour upon it a little water acidulated with sulphuric acid and slightly colored with potassium bichromate. If the mercury is then touched on the side with the point of a needle, the globule will contract and withdraw itself from the needle, and then return to its first position. This brings it in contact again with the needle point, the contraction is repeated,

and so on indefinitely. The explanation of these movements is to be found in the fact of the alternate oxidation and deoxidation of the mercury, whereby its capillary condition is changed, and the alternate swelling and flattening produced. This movement M. Lippmann has utilized as a motor, and a machine has been constructed in which the fly-wheel has made a hundred revolutions per minute.

A Certain Proof of Death.

THE signs of death which can be implicitly relied npon, even by medical men, are comparatively few. Consciousness may be abolished, the pulsation of the heart may be inaudible and imperceptible to the touch or eye, the respiratory movements may be inappreciable, the surface may feel cold-and yet life may not be quite extinguished. It has recently been suggested as a good method of general application, to tie a piece of twine rather tightly around a finger. If after a few minutes the part beyond the ligature neither swells nor alters in color, life may be regarded with tolerable certainty as extinct. In a recent contribution on this subject, Dr. Leon Davis has proposed another plan, which, however, can only be practised by a surgeon. The plan proposed by Dr. Davis, is the denudation and section of an artery. If the artery be empty, the heart is dead; the heart dead, the whole body has ceased to live. The great advantage to be derived from the employment of this sign is, that the empty. ing of the arteries must be simultaneous with death, and if it be present, attempts at restoration should be abandoned. If this phenomenon is not present, the attempt to restore life may yet succeed, The temporal artery, by reason of its nearness to the surface, may be selected for the operation, as also for the slight degree in which it contracts. ["Academy."]

Crossing the Red Sea.

A PAPER recently read by Herr Brugsch, at Cairo, contains the following interesting statements: Ist. The hieroglyphic tablet, which has cast so much light on ancient Egyptian geography, shows that the city of Tanis was also called Ramsès. 2d. Herr Brugsch has satisfied himself that the Pharaoh under whom Moses lived was Ramsès II., and his son and successor Ménephthah, was the Pharanh of the Exodus. Near Mount Casius, in the northeast of Egypt, existed formerly the Serbonian Lake, which was subject to great inundations from the sea under certain conditions of wind. It was there that the Persian army of Artaxerxes perished in the same manner as the army of the Egyptian king, and there it is, says Herr Brugsch, that the latter perished in their pursuit of the Hebrews. He argues that the mention of the Red Sea only occurs in the "Canticle of Moses," a work composed a long time after the occurrence, and that in the true historical narrative of Exodus, there is only men