Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/874

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wood had failed. It practiced a kind of co-operation and had some distinguished friends to wish it well. Among the speakers at its meetings was Dr. Frederic Hollick, still living, now a resident of New York city. The co-operative society was started as a means of getting cheaper flour for its members. On February 25, 1847, an appeal headed "Holbeck Anti-Corn Mill Association" was issued to the working classes of Leeds and vicinity by the "working people of Messrs. Benyon & Co.'s mill," Holbeck, inviting combination and subscriptions for establishing a mill to be the property of the subscribers and their successors, "in order to supply them with flour and flour only." Meetings were held, an organization was effected, and the mill was started. The history of the society and how it grew, how "flour only" was stricken from its scheme and other things were added and it branched out, how co-operative stores were established, how it gained the confidence of the public and the respect of rivals in business, its successes and its mistakes, its triumphs and failures, are told by Mr. Holyoake, year by year, in a detail in which everything is set down and nothing covered up. In 1897 the cooperative society had productive departments of flour, bakery, bespoke clothing, boot and shoe factory, brush factory, cabinet making, building, millinery, and dressmaking, employing 541 hands and turning over £26,949; 80 large stores for the sale of these and various other kinds of goods in Leeds and vicinity; drapery branches and boot and shoe stores; 43 butchering branches; and 37,000 subscribing purchasers. Its capital stood at £447,000; and its sales for the year amounted to £1,042,616.

D. Appleton and Company have added to their Home Reading Series The Earth and Sky, a primer of Astronomy for Young Readers, by Prof. Edward S. Holden. It is intended to be the first of a series of three or more volumes, all treating of astronomy in one form or another, and suited for reading in the school. The treatment is based on the principle that "it is not so simple as it appears to fix in the child's mind the fundamental fact that it is Nature which is true, and the book or the engraving which is a true copy of it. 'It says' is the snare of children as well as of their more sophisticated elders. The vital point to be insisted on is a constant reference from words to things." The volume is written as a conversation with a young lad. He is first shown how he may know for himself that the earth is not flat, though it certainly appears to be so. The next step is to show him that he may know that the earth is in fact round, and that it is a globe of immense size. Its situation in space is next considered, and the child's mind is led to some formal conclusions respecting space itself. It is then directed to the sun, to the moon and its changes, to the stars and their motions, to the revolution of the earth, etc.

In 1887 E. S. Holden published through the Regents of the University of California a list of recorded earthquakes on the Pacific coast, it being the first systematic publication of the sort. The purpose of it was to bring to light all the general facts about the various shocks, and enable studies to be made of particular earthquake phenomena. It was necessary at the Lick Observatory to keep a register of the times of occurrence of all shocks on account of their possible effects on the instruments. With this was associated in 1888, when the observatory began its active work, the collection of reports of shocks felt elsewhere on the Pacific coast. Mr. Holden now reprints this pamphlet through the Smithsonian Institution in A Catalogue of Earthquakes felt on the Pacific Coast, 1769 to 1897, with many corrections and additions, including a complete account of the earthquake observations at Mount Hamilton from 1887 to 1897, and an abstract of the great amount of information that has been collected regarding other Pacific coast earthquakes during the same interval.

The Psychologie als Erfahrungs-Wissenschaft of Hans Cornelius is not intended for a complete account and review of the facts of psychical life, but rather to present the fundamentals of a purely empirical theory, excluding all metaphysical views. Such an account should not start from any arbitrary abstractions or hypotheses, but simply from actually ascertained, directly perceived psychical experiences. On the other hand, an empirical definition should be required for all the terms that are used in a comprehen-