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LITERARY NOTICES.
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Nothing more is needed by way of description but to give the chapter headings; these are: The Site and the Soil; Hygiene in Architecture; The City House and Plumbing; The Country House; Ventilation and Heating; Our Water-supply; Kitchen and Table Hygiene; Sanitary Furniture; The Sick-room; Roof Gardens.

Open Sesame! Poetry and Prose for Schooldays. By Blanche Wilder Bellamy and Maud Wilder Goodwin. Vol. III. Boston: Ginn & Co. Pp. 861.

This volume, the closing one of the series, is intended for pupils over fourteen years of age, and young students in search of something to read or recite can scarcely fail to be satisfied with its varied contents.

There are rhymes of old-fashioned flavor from Chaucer and Robert Herrick and verses of modern seasoning by Joaquin Miller and Walt Whitman. The shorter masterpieces of English are given, as well as poems culled from Omar Khayyam, Schiller, and Victor Hugo. Famous stirring addresses are chosen from the time of Thucydides and onward, and wise words of counsel from Prof. Huxley and Jane Welch Carlyle.

The selections are grouped under five headings—Sentiment and Story; Art and Nature; Loyalty and Heroism; Song and Laughter; Holidays and Holy Days—and to each section an illustration is prefixed.

The State University of Iowa publishes semi-annually a journal entitled The Transit, edited by the Engineering Society in that institution (price, 50 cents). The second issue was that for December, 1890, and is largely devoted to the details of a series of cement tests carried on in the department of engineering. The paper was prepared by Mr. Hubert Remley, one of the authors of the article on cements in the Monthly for March, and is illustrated with diagrams and cuts of apparatus. Besides this, there are two short papers on cements in this issue, and other papers on The Preservation of Timber, A Simple Method of determining Latitude, and on Paving-Brick and Brick Pavements. Two of the university buildings are described, with illustrations, and the issue contains also editorial matter and a list of courses in engineering given by the university.

Two addresses by Prof. Delos Fall have been reprinted together from the Report of the Michigan State Board of Health for 1890. One, on School Hygiene, urges attention to everything that affects the health of children during school hours. The other is A Study of the Action of Alcohol on the Human Body, and presents, without any fanatical ranting, the evils which physiologists say that alcohol inflicts upon the human body. It also quotes General Greely as stating that the regular taking of alcohol is useless, or worse, in very cold regions, and Mr. Stanley as having the same opinion of its use in very hot regions.

Some of the experimental psychological studies of Alfred Binet have been published in a pamphlet entitled On Double Consciousness (Open Court, 50 cents). An essay on Experimental Psychology in France is prefixed to these studies, in which the special fields are mentioned that the leading psychologists of that country are engaged in, most of these being embraced in the domain of pathological psychology. By double consciousness is meant the capability of hysterical persons to respond to excitations of an insensible part of the body without being aware that the excitation or response has been made. The author describes experiments performed on the insensible arm and the hysterical eye, defends the hypothesis of double consciousness against the theory of unconscious automatic action, and discusses various topics connected with his general subject.

A pamphlet manual of Invertebrate Dissections has been published by Prof. Henry L. Osborn, of Hamline University, St. Paul, Minn, (price, 40 cents). It tells what parts are to be observed and where to look for them in each specimen. The creatures chosen for dissection are readily obtainable, and include the sponge, various hydroids, coral, star-fish, angle-worm, crayfish, etc., ending with the grasshopper. The author states that the accounts of type specimens contained in this manual are incomplete, and should be supplemented with details of anatomy, embryology, paleontology, etc., gathered from reading or lectures.

A lecture on Organic Evolution delivered by Prof. Samuel E. Tillman at the United States Military Academy has been printed at