Spain. The most interesting portion, perhaps, is the supplementary chapter on the Centennial Exposition, where Mr. Nichols was a member of the corps of judges, and of which he was evidently a close and well-informed student. But most enjoyable of all are the numerous pictures, which illustrate every important department of industrial art, and are engraved and printed in the most exquisite manner.

ONE of the complaints commonly made by believers in spiritualism and other correlated mysteries is that scientific men refuse to give the same sort of attention to its manifestations as they give to all the other phenomena which Nature presents. They say that scientists have made up their minds on a subject which they have not investigated, and profess to believe that thorough and impartial investigation would in every case lead to the acknowledgment of the reality of the spiritualistic phenomena if not to acceptance of the interpretation which spiritualists put upon them. This complaint, though not without some justification, has never been wholly true-individual scientists having over and over again tried to apply the ordinary tests of science; and the works of Dr. W. B. Carpenter show that he, at least, has neither been afraid nor unwilling to study the subject in all its bearings. The methods he has pursued, and the conclusions he has reached in the matter, are plainly enough indicated in certain chapters of his "Mental Physiology," but he has now presented his views in more precise and consecutive form in two lectures which he delivered a few months ago at the London Institution. In these lectures, just issued with copious addenda and pièces justificatives, he discusses historically and scientifically the whole subject of mesmerism, odylism, clairvoyance, thought-reading, tableturning, and spiritualism; and he speaks as one who is thoroughly familiar with all its phases, and whose mind is fully made up. Many of the so-called mesmeric and spiritualistic phenomena he refers to conscious fraud and imposition, others to ignorance and unintentional selfdeception, while for the small residuum of strange facts which have so puzzled and misled honest observers he finds an adequate explanation in sense - deceptions brought about by "the subjection of the mind to a dominant idea." Spiritualism in its modern manifestations he regards as one of those strange epidemic delusions which at various periods have swept over large portions of the world, and he maintains that science can put it down by proving, as it can readily do, that the really authentic data on which the delusion is based are the result of those abnormal conditions of the human mind and body with which physiologists and psychologists are already familiar. "Expectant Attention" plays the same crucial part as in Dr. Hammond's treatise, which we had occasion to notice a year or so ago, and "Fallacies of Memory" dispose of whatever this fails to explain.

Of course the question as to the adequacy of Dr. Carpenter's interpretation is preeminently one with which scientific experts must deal; but we may call attention, as we have already done in our notice of Dr. Hammond's book, to what appears to be the special weakness of his argument. The very structure of science, the entire fabric of human knowledge, rests upon our assumption

1 Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc., Historically and Scientifically Considered. Being Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution, with Preface and Appendix, by W. B. Carpenter, M. D., LL. D., F. R. S. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo, pp. 158.

of the substantial trustworthiness of the testimony of our senses regarding the external world. The testimony may be misleading, as Berkeley has demonstrated, but it is all we have, and Natural Science at least commits suicide in discrediting it. Now Dr. Carpenter's argument is wholly dependent for its validity upon the proposition that our senses are liable to deceive us, and he summarizes his doctrine in the sentence that "we should rather trust to the evidence of our sense than to that of our senses. He admits that the evidence of the senses under the usual conditions is sufficient for all ordinary matters, but argues that it is not admissible when extraordinary matters are dealt with. But just here begins the real difficulty-What is ordinary and what extraordinary? Each age and each period would return a different answer, for, as some one has well said, "the miracles of one generation are the commonplaces of the

next."

Inconclusive in some respects though the book may be, however, there can be no doubt as to its great interest and suggestiveness. It is written with remarkable animation and vigor, and it abounds in "cases" quite as wonderful as any which the spiritualists have brought forward.

EXPERIENCE has shown that the study of the natural sciences cannot be pursued to advantage by beginners any more than by advanced scholars, save through the medium of practical experiments; and a very important gap in existing means of instruction will be filled by Mayer and Barnard's "Experimental Science Series for Beginners."1 The initial volume of the series has just been issued, and its design, as explained in the preface, is "to furnish a number of simple and easy experiments in the phenomena of light, that any one can perform with materials that may be found in any dwelling-house, or that may be bought for a small sum in any town or city." Nearly all the experiments are new, all have been thoroughly tested, the whole of them can be performed at a total cost of less than fifteen dollars, and they make familiar to the most childish intelligence the salient facts concerning the sources, action, reflection, refraction, and decomposition of light, the laws of colors, and the teachings of the solar spectrum. The plan of the book differs from that of any of its predecessors in this, that the experiments are not subordinate to and merely illustrative of the text, but, in fact, constitute the essence of the instruction; the method is to give first minute directions for performing the experiment, then to describe its results, and then to point out, as the natural outcome of the performance, the particular fact or law which it illustrates. The experiment is the lesson; the idea of the authors being that "the experimenter who questions Nature himself, who constructs his own apparatus, and who performs his own experiments, learns past forgettinghe knows because he has observed." Though all are simple and easily performed, many of the experiments are exceedingly beautiful, and children would delight in them precisely as in the mysterious shows of the magic lantern. In schools the pupils might take turns in performing them, and the time devoted to the lesson would doubtless be looked forward to with eagerness and back upon with regret. Similar volumes will deal with sound, heat, optics, magnetism, electricity, and mechanics.

1 Experimental Science Series for Beginners. Light: A Series of Simple, Entertaining, and Inexpensive Experiments in the Phenomena of Light, for the Use of Students of Every Age. By Alfred M. Mayer and Charles Barnard. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 16m0, pp. 113.

THE

HE tourist to whom the fashionable haunts of the Atlantic States and the charming scenery of Europe are familiar, and who presumes from this

Pacific Ocean which is now known as the "North west." Here is an area larger than the whole of Europe combined, Russia excepted, which remains,

NEW TACOMA. MOUNT RAINIER IN THE BACKGROUND.

comparatively speaking, a terra incognita to those who travel in quest of pleasure or health; an area which, in serenity of climate, richness of color, variety of pastoral scenery, luxuriance of shrubbery, extent of forests, nobleness of rivers, and grandeur of snow-shrouded mountains, will compare with any in the world. Add to these a flora new and strange and growing in tropical profusion, and a fauna which will almost compare with that of Central Africa in abundance, and we have all the attractions that can lure the invalid, artist, or scientist, away from his chamber, studio, or laboratory. Here may be found scenes which have no prototypes in any portion of the globe, and all on that scale of magnificence so peculiar to the Pacific coast. Nature seems to have showered her bounteous blessings with lavish hand throughout the entire domain, for she yields no less her rich and

fact that he has enjoyed all the scenic beauties of Nature worth beholding, will readily learn how fallaciously he has reasoned should his footsteps ever guide him to that magnificent domain adjoining the NOVEMBER, 1877. VOL. III.-25

varied scenic treasures than she does her nodding fields of golden grain and extensive parks oppressed by their weight of graminaceous verdure. It would be no exaggeration to state that the Northwest presents the combined landscapes of Switzerland and Italy, the Highlands of Scotland and the English lake-region—the whole forming a panorama capable of expressing every type and emotion of scenic beauty. Of the entire area, none excels Washington Territory in variety and grandeur; for its undulating surface displays the rolling prairie and the elevated plateau, the picturesque dingle and the dense forest, the murmuring brooklet and the mighty river, the ribbon-like fall and the seething cascade, the sloping, motion-giving hill and the towering mountain-range whose crest is inwreathed in garlands of perpetual snow.

I entered that grand Territory at Kalama, a hamlet situated on the Columbia River about one hundred miles from its mouth. This place, which was laid out as a town-site in 1870 by the directors of the Northern Pacific Railroad, was at one time supposed to be the foundation for the great metropolis which prophets, with land to sell, had predicted would spring up somewhere on the northwest coast of the Pacific as a rival to San Francisco; and the consequence was, that everybody who had a dollar to spare began to invest it in Kalama lots, expecting that it was to be the city of the prophets, and an El Dorado for investors. Everybody who was anybody was wild about the place, and speculators thronged there from all portions of the continent in hopes of being able to purchase at least a foot or two of the precious soil. The result was, that houses sprung up like magic, and parcels of land that could now be bought for a very poor song brought from five hundred to two thousand dollars. One year after the establishment of the place it had a population exceeding one thousand, and assumed the dignity of a municipal government, but to-day I doubt if it contains one-tenth that number of permanent residents. As soon as Jay Cooke failed it received a coup-degrace from which it cannot recover; so its probable fate is to stand as a monument of false prophecy and the mutability of financial hopes. The architectural appearance of the city was never prepossessing, it being composed almost entirely of rude wooden structures, the majority of which were devoted to the sale of that "strong tea" without which no pioneer town is supposed to thrive. It is a Western proverb that wherever you see numerous saloons you will find money plentiful, and, by applying this to Kalama, we must infer that it once in its career boasted of wealth; but its deserted aspect at present, and the rueful countenances of those who cling to it in adversity, would prove that it had long since vanished.

Being the southern terminus of the Puget Sound Railroad, the tourist is booked here for a trip to the north. I left the place by the noon train, and was soon dashing through the dense forests of evergreens so characteristic of Western Washington. The train, which consisted of only one car and a locomotive,

was occupied by a Chinaman, an Indian half-breed, an ugly Flathead squaw, and a German immigrant family, whose greenish-yellow hair and skim-milk eyes contrasted most forcibly with the coarse, dark hair and tawny faces of their companions. The company, which was strongly suggestive of the cosmopolitan character of the population of the Northwest, recalled the assertion about the lion and the lamb, for here were the very opposites of each other in every way quietly seated in the same compartment without manifesting any ill-feeling toward one another-though, to be literally correct, might say that the squaw eyed the Chinaman in such a manner as to lead one to infer that she would not object to adorning her person with his long and well-braided queue.

The run through the forest was exceedingly interesting to me, as it displayed luxuriant Nature in her primeval condition, and proved the effect of humidity on plant-life. The towering firs with their tapering forms, that often loomed upward to a height of four hundred feet, presented a funereal aspect in their garb of gloomy green; but a dingle of whiteblossomed cornel, umbrageous, bright-green maple or graceful ash appeared occasionally, and did much to relieve the monotonous hue of the coniferæ. A pretty glimpse of a rapid stream, over which glided Indian canoes filled with dusky Masaniellos, presented itself occasionally, and gave a variety to the landscape as pleasing as it was picturesque.

One

One fact in relation to the botany of the country attracted my attention, and that was that the flowers seen were of the most gaudy hues, generally a brilliant red or a glaring yellow, and that the firs and pines, in opposition to the general rule, grew close to the streams as if they had no fear of water. of the most peculiar shrubs encountered was the "devil's walking-stick" (Epinanox horridum), a most disagreeable opponent to wanderers unacquainted with its characteristics. It has an altitude of from three to five feet, broad, smooth leaves, reddish flowers, and is covered with long, stout thorns capable of giving a disagreeable wound should one collide with them. I also noted that each plant guarded its own ground with a combativeness worthy of the buffalo-grass of the Wyoming plains, and resented the unwelcome intrusion of disagreeable visitors.

After traveling forty miles, we emerged on an open, sandy prairie, covered with a short, thin grass, which affords a meagre pabulum to sheep and mustangs for three or four months in the year. This was the first settlement I had seen since leaving Kalama, and pleasant it seemed to be near the abode of man. This is called Mound Prairie, from a large mound some fifty or sixty feet' high, and containing several acres of land, which rises at its western termiIt is also densely covered with smaller mounds, varying from a few inches to two feet in height, and having a circumference of from ten to one hundred Their origin has been the cause of much speculation among scientists, but nearly all differ in their deductions. The late Professor Agassiz stated that they were the nests of a species of fish, now ex

nus.

feet.