ical analysis may find in the illustrations a ready means for the identification of the plants that grow around them, and through the accompanying descriptions they will at the same time acquire a familiarity with botanical language. The enterprise of preparing this work was projected by Judge Brown, who is President of the Torrey Botanical Club, and has been diligently prosecuted for six years under the supervision of Dr. Britton, and, as to the text, mainly by him; while the work in all its parts has been carefully revised by both authors. The latest matured results of botanical studies, here and in Europe, have been availed of for the work, so as to bring it fully abreast of the knowledge and scientific conceptions of the time, and make it answer present needs. The area treated of has been so liberally defined as practically to include the entire flora of the northern portion of the Great Plains. Most of the arctic plants are also included, for there are only a few of them which may not be found within the limits prescribed for the work. The figures are all from original drawings for this book, either from fresh plants or from herbarium specimens. All have been first drawn of natural size from medium-sized specimens and afterward reduced to a proportion which is indicated. Hence they do not suffer from the use of a magnifier, but are rather improved by it. The systematic arrangement has been revised so as to correspond as nearly as may be with the order of nature as now understood—as an order of evolution from the more simple to the more complex—and the sequence of families adopted by Engler and Prantl has been closely followed. The nomenclature is according to the code devised by the Paris Botanical Congress in 1867, as modified by the rules adopted by the Botanical Club of the American Association. English names are given as far as possible, but, in the confusion that exists in respect to these, great exercise of judgment in selection has been called for.
In the Social Forces in German Literature,[1] Dr. Kuno Francke, of Harvard University, attempts to define what seem to him the essential features of German literature from the point of view of the student of civilization rather than from that of the linguistic scholar or literary critic. By his studies and various influences he has been led to look at the substance rather than the form of literature, to see in it primarily the working of popular forces, to consider it chiefly as an expression of national culture. His effort is to supply what seems to be a decided need of a book which, based upon an original study of the sources, should give a coherent account of the great intellectual movements of German life as expressed in literature, and point out the mutual relation of action and reaction between these movements and social and political conditions. To his view all literary development is determined by the incessant conflict between the tendency toward personal freedom and the tendency toward collective organization. The subject is considered under this view in connection with the period of the migrations, from the fifth to the ninth century; with the growth of mediæval hierarchy and feudalism, the height of chivalric culture, the rise of the middle classes, the era of the Reformation, and the several epochs since, whose characteristics have been reflected in literary development; the whole constituting an admirable and instructive study of this phase of the history of civilization.
A very useful little book on How to Feed Children[2] has recently come to us from Mrs. Louise E. Hogan. The framework for the book consisted of a number of magazine articles that have appeared during the last two years in various journals. The author's aim has been to offer in a practical form a few suggestions concerning the application of the principles of dietetics to feeding in the nursery and throughout the period of childhood. All the material can of course be found in technical manuals in a much more extended form, and there is no claim of originality; but an attempt has been made to select the most important and general rules, and to present and apply them in a simple and practical way. While the close relations between physiology and dietetics are generally
