this subject, and we venture to suggest that he should seize upon his first leisure and give us a volume on the Aryan question. We want a volume from him giving us the result of his study of Latham, Penka, Rendal, Schrader, and Rydberg, with his own researches into this interesting field. "The Discovery of America" contains a fine portrait of the author, a large number of old maps, several modern maps, and facsimiles and other illustrations of great help to the reader. No scholar can afford to neglect this work, which constitutes one of the most important contributions ever made to the historical literature of our country. RASMUS B. ANDERSON. THE MICROSCOPE AND BIOLOGY.* Everybody is surprised the first time he enters the immense world of little things that lies just beyond the range of ordinary vision —a world of variety of shape and form and color for the curious, of symmetry and wonderful finish and adaptation of parts to uses for the deeper student, whether he be utilitarian in his motives, or purely philosophical. When in early days the navigators of the globe had sailed hither and yon, and discovered the great continental boundaries, they were followed by scores of explorers who scrutinized every darkest cranny, some in greed of material gain which they often secured, others in desire of pure knowledge; and these were always rewarded. So the early students of nature discovered continents of knowledge, and hosts of later followers are exploring their darkest depths in hope of gain or love of truth. Perhaps the first who used a microscope in this search was Galileo. On this point there is some dispute; but the first one whose discoveries by means of that instrument were considerable enough to notably enlarge the sum of knowledge was Anton Leeuwenhoeck, a Hollander. In 1673 he began sending to the Royal Society of Great Britain, then in its infancy, accounts of the numerous surprising discoveries he made with an instrument of the crudest simplicity, it being merely a glass bead set in a brass plate, through which he viewed specimens carried on a needle mounted in a THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS REVELATIONS. By the late William B Carpenter, C.B. Seventh edition, with text reconstructed by the Rev. W. H. Dallinger, LL.D. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. post fixed to the opposite side. His instrument was in effect much like the little "watchcharms" which surprise us by a view of St. Peter's at Rome or the full text of the Declaration of Independence. With this simple little instrument this man of immense industry showed that popular dictum was in error when it declared that fresh-water mussels were made from mud, for he discovered that they grow from eggs, and, perhaps for the first time, watched the now familiar phenomena of their development. He first proved that fleas develop, not from "heaps of moist dust," but from eggs; he saw the scales of a butterfly's wing, the claws of the spider's foot and her spinnerets, also the insect's compound eye, and hundreds of other facts now perfectly familiar and commonplace. With the use of the microscope and the needs of improvement a constant development has taken place, and microscopic construction has been pushed forward from the single lens magnifying only a few diameters, to the modern instrument magnifying ten thousand diameters and improved in every part. It is little wonder, in view of the technical excellence required by the needs of modern research, that technique in the microscope has suffered at times from the danger which besets technique in all art, of becoming an end in itself; and that in consequence a department of pseudo "microscopy" has sprung up. The unscientific microscopist, companion of the coleopterist whom Holmes satirizes for his interest in mere collecting, is a man who adds continually to his treasures of specimen or appliance, but uses none for the purpose of quizzing Nature; he sees only what others tell him, and limits his ambition by the ownership of a homogeneous immersion objective and a fine collection of mounted slides. He cannot find you a specimen of amoeba, or demonstrate its nucleus after you have found it for him. Yet technique is of the most fundamental importance to modern biological research. Not so many years ago the biological problems were largely what one may call "tissue problems"; the shapes of cells were studied as components of tissues, but the phenomena within the cells were not studied or thought of. To-day all the biological problems are of the cells. Biology has at last become thoroughly informed by the idea that the cells are not only the units of structure but also the units of function, and that it is all-important that the condition of life and growth, action and death, of these individuals shall be thoroughly understood. So new is this department of biological study that the young science of cytology, or the biology of the cell, is not separately represented in as modern a work as the "Encyclopædia Britannica,' Encyclopædia Britannica," which includes separate and very valuable articles on histology, or tissue science, and pathology, or tissue disease. Investigations of cells, however, require the utmost attention to technique, in fact, to every detail of using the microscope and preparing the object. and finely illustrated. In it the plant and then the animal kingdoms are reviewed by typical forms, representing principal groups, beginning at the simpler and advancing through the simpler multicellular to the highest organisms in both kingdoms. The microscopic plants and animals receive most attention, and are described in detail, together with their life histories, and with numerous references to important and generally accessible monographs in which the subject can be more fully investigated if desired. The myriad forms of pond life, both plant and animal, are many of them described and figured, and abundant suggestions for collection are given, together with many biological details. Here the microscopist who has found some curiosity of life-may The revision of that standard work, "Carpenter on the Microscope," is, on the technical side, brought thoroughly down to date. The first half of the book (459 pages) presents a very exhaustive and most valuable treatise upon every aspect of technique, optical principles, theory of vision and the compound micro-hap a chain of emerald beads, with one, two, or scope, history of the instrument, various modern models, measuring and drawing, devices and sundry accessory apparatus, including the life-slide, for cultivating living micro-organisms where they can be kept under continuous observation, and the preparation of objects for observation by a great variety of methods, including many of the most modern. This part of the book is so clear and detailed that any interested and patient student can acquire from it the necessary principles of microscopic manipulation in all departments better than from any other single work we know of. In this portion of the work the optical and mechanical side have received more attention than histological technique, or the preparation of the object for examination. The preservation of biological material is so large a department of technique to-day, and so many individual methods exist, that only in special works on the subject can it be fully elucidated; but the subject deserves more space than it has received, even at the expense of curtailing somewhat the description of the instrument. A place should have been given for the formulas of various preparation fluids, many of which the working microscopist must learn to make for himself as the need of them arises. It is only just, however, to say that the care and preparation of the object has received very detailed and considerable attention, and that enough methods have been given for the majority of readers, while the specialists who use the work will not be likely to go to it for such purposes. The second half of the book is devoted to an account of the revelations of the microThis is a volume in itself, thoroughly three large ones in the centre-can learn that it is Nostoc, an alga akin to Spirogyra, the beautiful long green filamentous plant so common in running water, and can further learn details about its mode of life; or he sees an elongate creature swimming about with a pair of small-sized whirlpools at one end, and he can readily find among the pictures a rotifer enough like his specimen to assist his identification, and then by search he can find out a great deal about his specimen,—and this every microscopist is anxious to do. The higher organic forms, both plant and animal, are treated histologically rather than cytologically, so that the modern biological standpoint is not fully attained, though it is constantly bordered upon. In the opening paragraphs of Chapter XXII., on the Vertebrata, the importance of protoplasmic units, the cells, as the real agents, is dilated upon, and foot-note references to the general literature of the subject are given; but the writer goes on to say that as the work is not designed for the professional student in histology, but to supply scientific information to the ordinary microscopist," no attempt is made to do more than describe the most important of those distinctive characters which the principal tissues present." This is to be regretted, for the ordinary microscopist is not only interested in seeing the significance of tissue structure as an outcome or result of celllife, but is inspired for further researches by having a motive for study supplied him,- for this problem of the meaning of structure is sure to add real interest, and is perfectly apprehensible. The admirable manner in which the general anatomy of the minuter animals and histology of the larger ones has been set forth does accomplish the aim of the editor and his co-workers, and the "ordinary microscopist" can find in it the help he needs for his researches; and yet we must regret that in addition the scientific standpoint of to-day was not constantly expounded. MORE OF MCMASTER'S HISTORY.* Nine years ago Professor McMaster began the publication of his "History of the People of the United States." "Much," he announced, "must be written of wars, conspiracies, and rebellions; of presidents, of congresses, of embassies, of treaties, of the ambition of political leaders in the senate-house, and of the rise of great parties in the nation." Yet his chief theme should be the history of the people: their dress, occupations, and amusements; the changes in their manners and morals; the im dition. We have written as if the microscope were the tool of biologists solely. Until of late it was very largely so, but within a few years its use has opened a new and most important field of study in geological science. The new science of petrography, also born since the last edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," receives a very brief but valuable notice in Chap-provements in their economic and social conter XXIII. It has been found possible to sectionize specimens of rocks, study their structure, and, by the appearances of the component minerals, to read much of the previous history of the mass, a feat impossible before the application of this method. The opinion is daily gaining ground that some of the schistose rocks are not metamorphosed sediments, but true igneous rocks which have been altered by pressure into schists. The optical methods now in use enable the petrologist to determine the constituents of rock-masses with astonishing success, and the microscope is employed in the study of fossil botany and zoology with valuable results. The departments of chemical crystallization and polarization do not receive notable attention in the work, for the reason that they do not interest the ordinary microscopist. The number of those who use the microscope as a toy rather than a tool that is, as amateurs rather than professionally is very large, both in this country and in England; and there is a large sphere of usefulness for this revision of a popular work now in its seventh edition. It can be used safely, for it is as accurate as any work in so new a science as biology can be, and contains a vast amount of useful and stimulating matter. But its sphere of usefulness is by no means confined to the class to whom its editors so modestly recommend it, for students of biology can hardly find a more generally useful and handy book, both for its valuable table and for its technical matter, for its very numerous anatomic and histological figures, many from the best and most recent writers, and for its very numerous bibliographical references. All the details of the bookmaker's art have received the most scrupulous attention, and a very comfortable volume is the result. HENRY L. OSBORN. The third volume of this notable work has now appeared, covering the years from 1803 to 1812. While not so conspicuously important as the preceding twenty years, the period is Jefferson and his party abandoned their prinstill significant. In the purchase of Louisiana, ciples of strict construction. They strained, made the Union, in the late Alexander Johnif they did not violate, the Constitution, and ston's phrase, "a fixed fact." Then came the Embargo and its arbitrary enforcement, until by 1808 the political somersault seemed complete. Democrats now stood where the Federalists had stood ten years before, while Federalists adopted the language of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and openly advocated a dissolution of the Union. Placed between the combatants in the great European struggle, attacked by English orders in council and French decrees, yet determined to remain neutral and "conquer without war," the intercourse and from non-intercourse into war. United States drifted from embargo into nonThese, with Burr's conspiracy and the war with the Barbary powers, are probably the most obvious features of the period; yet they form but a part of its real history. The purand the extinguishment of Indian titles in the chase of a vast empire beyond the Mississippi, Northwest and the region south of the Ohio, opened a new territory to settlement. Westward emigration increased rapidly. Up the Mohawk valley toward the Great Lakes, over the mountains, down the Ohio, went the streams of population, settling western New York and Pennsylvania, southern Ohio and Indiana, overflowing Kentucky and Tennessee, and reaching northern Georgia and Alabama. A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, from the Revolution to the Civil War. By John Bach McMaster, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In five volumes. Volume III. New York: D. Appleton & Co. "From this rush of people into the new country came economie consequences of a most serious nature. The rapidity of the movement and the vastness of the area covered made it impossible for the States to do many of the things they ought to have done for the welfare of their new citizens. The heaviest taxes that could have been laid would not have sufficed to cut out half the roads, or build half the bridges, or clear half the streams necessary for easy communication between the new villages, and for the successful prosecution of trade and commerce." Along the coast, capital was drawn to internal improvements, but on the outbreak of the European war turned quickly to shipping. "But the movement of the people westward not only went on, but went on with increasing rapidity. The high price of wheat, of corn, of flour, due to the demand for exportation, sent thousands into the Genesee country and the borders of Lake Champlain to farm, and from them came back the cry for better means of transportation. The people of the shipping towns were quite as eager to get the produce as the farmers were to send it, and with the opening of the century the old rage for road-making, river improvements, and canals revived. The States were still utterly unable to meet the demand, and one by one were forced to follow the policy begun by Pennsylvania in 1791 and spend their money on roads and bridges in the sparsely settled counties, and, by liberal charters and grants of tolls, encourage the people of the populous counties to make such improvements for themselves." In every part of the country were sought "better means of communication, shorter channels of inland trade, and less costly ways of transportation." Gallatin prepared his famous report on internal improvements. Congress founded the coast survey and began the Cumberland Road. "After twenty years of cold indifference, the people found use for the steamboat." The number of banks increased. Manufactures began to thrive, stimulated by the exclusion of foreign goods and the necessity of supplying the home market. Political ideas changed, too. Democracy spread rapidly. Property qualifications were abolished, religious tests were removed, life tenure of judges and the use of common law in the courts were attacked. A body of young Republicans arose, bent on war with England and “willing to face debt and probable bankruptcy on the chance of creating a nation, conquering Canada, and carrying the American flag to Mobile and Key West." Debate was checked in Congress by the introduction of the previous question. Henry Clay transformed the Speaker from a presiding officer into the leader of the House. The account of such economic and social movements is the most distinctive part of the third volume of Professor McMaster's work. Newspapers, pamphlets, and statute-books have been explored, and the mass of material thus collected has been presented in a manner which shows clearly its relation to later events, and particularly to the "American system" of Henry Clay. Professor McMaster is an avowed protectionist, and is sometimes led into extreme statements. Thus: "The protective system of the United States began on the fourth day of July, 1789, when Washington signed the first of our many tariff acts. The day was well chosen, for that act was a second declaration of independence. It was a formal statement that henceforth domestic manufactures were to be encouraged in the United States, that henceforth we were to be industrially independent, and that the goods, wares, and merchandise of foreign nations should come into our ports on such terms as best suited our interests. "The framing of the Constitution of the United States was the direct and immediate consequence of the ruin of every kind of trade, commerce, and industry that followed the close of the Revolution. Nothing did so much to break down the old confederation as its inability to regulate trade and encourage manufactures. It is not surprising, therefore, that the moment Congress met under the Constitution urgent calls were made for the immediate exercise of the ample powers that had been given it." This is strong doctrine, and we doubt whether many qualified scholars would maintain that the Confederation failed in any considerable degree for lack of power to encourage manufactures. It is easy to exaggerate the demand for a protective policy before the war of 1812; American manufactures were largely the creation of the Embargo, and owed. as Mr. Henry Adams says, "more to Jefferson and Virginians, who disliked them, than to Northern statesmen, who merely encouraged them after they were established." The other parts of the volume do not call for extended comment. The political and diplomatic history of the period is told in a pleasant and interesting style, which preserves its distinct flavor of Macaulay, with somewhat less of the flaring contrasts and forced transitions that mar the earlier volumes. Characterizations of men or events we rarely find, except so far as these are implied in the selection and grouping of material. To discover the author's opinion of Jefferson, we must combine widely scattered comments. Thus, we are told of his scientific tastes, of his "sluggish nature at last "roused to feeble action," of his "manly courage," of his proneness to intrigue, of his devotion to popularity; his idealism, perhaps his most significant characteristic, is not mentioned. Perhaps Professor McMaster shrank from attempting the portrait of a man whom even Mr. Henry Adams's sure hand found a bundle of contradictions. Where a judgment is ventured, it is not always fortunate, and sometimes suggests the tone of the contemporary pamphlet. Thus, Governor Winthrop Sargent is represented as "holding the Federal doctrine that none but New Englanders were fit to be free"; General Wilkinson's three volumes of memoirs are "as false as any yet written by man"; "no act so arbitrary, so illegal, so infamous," as the removal of Judge Pickering, "had yet been done by the Senate of the United States." Another example of hasty conclusions may be found in the account of the Georgia land cession of 1802, where the author says: "The three Commissioners for the United States were, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Attorney-General. They were nominated on the last day of December, 1799. They fell, therefore, under Jefferson's rule, that all appointments made after the result of the election was known should be treated as null. But he chose to find another reason for getting rid of them. They were Heads of Departments, and, construing the action of Adams to mean that the Commissioners should be chosen from the Heads of Departments, he removed them and nomi nated his own Secretaries and Attorney-General in their stead.” conduct is in accordance with the facts. Taken as a whole, the third volume is an importance as the schism in the Democratic party are omitted entirely or given but brief mention. The neglect of political institutions is particularly noticeable. Something more is needed than outlines of acts of Congress or summaries of political pamphlets and debates. Social and economic facts can be properly understood only when we have a "bony framework" of institutions to fit them to, and no history of a people can be adequate which does not furnish such an institutional framework. CHARLES H. HASKINS. A BOTANIST'S JOURNEYINGS.* The title of the recently published autobiography of Marianne North," Recollections of a Happy Life," is hardly indicative of the real character of the book. In fact, it is a work of the same nature as Charles Darwin's "Naturalist's Voyage Round the World," and, though of lesser interest and importance, has nevertheless considerable significance as a contribution to science and to knowledge of foreign lands. Miss North's chief interest in life was flowerhunting, her ambition being to examine and paint on the spot specimens of the flora of every country of the world. The accomplishment of this purpose led her through many and long wanderings. One of the results is the magnificent collection of botanical paintings made and presented by her to the Kew Gardens, together with the building in which they are housed; another is this diary of adventures on her sketching tours, which embraced Jamaica, South America, Japan, Africa, and many other localities. A "happy' India, Borneo, Australia, Seychelles Islands, life truly, since any successful achievement of a life purpose is a great happiness; yet surely bright side of things, to carry one through these it demanded an unusual gift for seeing the climates, with bad food, perils by land and long and toilsome journeys, often in poisonous sea, by fire and flood, and enduring hardships which few women travelling absolutely alone would have dared to face. One of Miss North's friends speaks of her faculty of finding pearls in every ugly oyster; a driver in California left her with the parting recommendation that "she was one of the right sort; she neither cared for bears nor yet for Injuns." Warned improvement on the first and second, although it shares with them a certain deficiency in historical perspective, implying the lack of a well thought out and clearly defined plan. Even the introductory announcement is at times disregarded. More space than was promised is given, and rightly, to "presidents, congresses, embassies, and treaties," and even more is said of wars, conspiracies, and rebellions." Thirty-five pages are devoted to a detailed account of Burr's conspiracy, and this in a history which dismisses the formation of the Constitution in less than half this space. It is difficult to see on what principle this can be defended; one can hardly keep down the suspicion that the picturesqueness of the subject has something to do with the extended treatment it receives. Such disproportion is the Such disproportion is the graphy of Marianne North. Edited by her sister, Mrs. John more to be regretted since matters of so much * RECOLLECTIONS OF A HAPPY LIFE: Being the AutobiAddington Symonds. In two volumes. New York: Macmillan & Co. |
