Zoölogy for Students and General Readers. By A. S. Packard, Jr., M. D., Ph. D., Professor of Zoölogy in Brown University. With numerous Illustrations. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 719. Price, $3.
Dr. Packard has produced a superior text-book for the use of zoological students. It is considerably fuller than the ordinary manuals, and provides for pretty thorough study without taking rank among the voluminous and exhaustive treatises. The general reader will find much in it to interest him, but it has been prepared for the advantage of working students; and the author's purpose will only be attained as the learner uses the work to acquire a direct and actual knowledge of zoölogical science. The author thus states the objects he has had in view in preparing his books: "Should this manual aid in the work of education, stimulate students to test the statements presented in it by personal observations, and thus elicit some degree of the independence and self-reliance characteristic of the original investigator, and also lead them to entertain broad views in biology, and to sympathize with the more advanced and more natural ideas now taught by the leading biologists of our time, the author will feel more than repaid."
Problems of Life and Mind. Third Series. By George Henry Lewes. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1880. Pp. 500. Price, $3.
This volume contains all the remaining manuscript of the "Problems of Life and Mind" left by Mr. Lewes at the time of his death. Together with a small volume, published a year ago, it forms his contribution proper to psychology, though his "Physical Basis of Mind," in any extended view of the science, also forms a part. In the former volume the aim and scope of the science were considered, and in this the inquiry is carried a few steps into the science itself. The work opens with a discussion of the question of mind as a function of the organism, in which the distinctive views of Mr. Lewes, as to the nature of mind and its relation to the organized body in which its phenomena are manifested, are set forth with clearness, and some of the opposing views criticised with effect. The "sphere of sense and logic of feeling" occupies the author in the second problem of the work, and the like domain of intellect and the logic of signs is considered in the fragment of the remaining problem. Like all the works of this series, the present has the fault of too great diffuseness and unnecessary repetition, but it contains much that is valuable, many suggestive hints, and a good deal of strong thinking. Any examination of the positions taken by the work, or of their relation to the teachings of other psychologists, is impossible here, and nothing further need therefore be said save that students, to whom the subject is of interest, will find this, as all his other works, interesting throughout, and the exposition remarkably lucid.
The Younger Edda. With an Introduction, Notes, Vocabulary, and Index. By R. B. Anderson. Chicago: S. C Griggs & Co. 1880. Pp. 302. Price, 82.
Most people know something of the mythologies and traditions of Greece and Rome, of India and China; but few know anything of those of our Teutonic ancestors, the Norsemen. To bring before English readers the chief features of the theory of creation of these northern peoples. Professor Anderson has undertaken the translation of "The Younger Edda" of Iceland, contained in this volume. Together with "The Elder Edda" this forms a complete system of things. "The Elder Edda presents," says Professor Anderson, "the Odinic faith in a series of lays or rhapsodies," while "The Younger Edda contains the systematized theogony and cosmogony of our forefathers. The two constitute, as it were, the Odinic Bible." The translation is accompanied with very full notes.
Elementary Lessons on Sound. By Dr. W. H. Stone. London: Macmillan & Co. 1879. Pp. 188. Price, 80 cents.
In this little volume are given briefly the main facts of acoustics, with special regard to their relation to music, besides information that is properly intermediate and supplementary to both acoustics and music. It is clearly written and contains in a small compass a large amount of information.
