LITERARY NOTES. THE Scribners have in press a volume of "Essays" by President Noah Porter. A "JOHN BRIGHT ROOM," devoted to works on history and political economy, is to be fitted up in the Birmingham Free Library. BRYANT & STRATTON'S Business College, Philadelphia, have had printed an address on the "Elements of Success," by James A. Garfield, for general distribution. THE peculiarly uninforming character of many book titles receives a fresh illustration from Francis Power Cobbe's Peaks of Darien, which proves to be a collection of essays on moral and religious subjects. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS have brought out a supplement to their Best Reading, by Lynd E. Jones. It consists mainly of classified lists of the most important works published during the past five years, with critical indications affixed. DR. SMILES'S famous book, Self-Help, has been made one of the "Franklin Square Library." It has been translated in nearly every European language, as well as some of the dialects of India and Japan. It has a taking title: the whole struggling world grasps at the idea conveyed in it. LAST year the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, Jersey City, N. J. gave $275 in prizes. This year they have increased the amount to be given to $1,000. All students interested in the art of drawing should read their advertisement on our cover page and send for a circular giving particulars. J. M. STODDART & Co., Philadelphia, have just issued the XIV volume of the American reprint of the Enyclopædia Britannica. The publishers also announce a supplement to the whole work, occupying several volumes and bringing it up to the present time, especially in American topics. IN our notice of Doty's Rules and Hints on the Theory and Practice of Teaching we omitted to state that it is published by S. R. Winchell & Co., Chicago, Ill., ten cents per copy. The little book contains much more of useful matter than many of the more pretentious volumes on the subject of which it treats. "THE NEW BOTANY: A Lecture on the Best Method of Teaching the Science. By W. J. Beal, M. Sc., Ph. D., Professor of Botany in the Agricultural College, Lansing Mich." This is a pamphlet of sixteen pages, published by C. H. Marot, at the office of the Gardener's Monthly, Philadelphia. It does not profess to be a text-book for pupils, but a lecture for teachers, and it is undoubtedly an excellent little work. It opens with a short history of the science of botany from Linnæus down to Darwin and Sachs, and claims an epoch in botanical science—the dawning of the "New Botany" in 1862. What the author styles New Botany is partly recent discovery in the biology of plants and partly new methods of teaching "the botany of our forefathers." He relies on the observing powers of the pupils first. A lesson on any plant or any plant organ is introduced by giving the pupil a specimen, or telling him where to find it, and taking a report from him next time, including the sum total of his observations regarding it. The lesson learned in this way may afterward be learned in the text-book or not, as seems necessary. A large part of the work is devoted to exact suggestions to teachers how to proceed under a variety of circumstances, and the teachers who will not find it a valuable aid, if they will try it, are few. THE SCHOOLMASTER, Chicago, Ill., strongly deprecates the growing use of Question Books by teachers who must seek certificates from Superintendents of Instruction. There is certainly truth in the following remarks, though there are ways in which such handy little books can be used to advantage. Says The Schoolmaster: "There is no more lamentable or significant commentary upon the quality of our teachers and their teaching than the number of question books' published and the immense quantities of them sold. It is safe to say that no other book for teachers sells as well, and their use seems to be on the increase. "Being able to answer isolated questions is not knowing a subject. "There is only one honest way of getting an education, and that is by mastering subjects in their principles, by knowing them as wholes. But this is never the case of persons who cram themselves with a set of questions and answers, nor is such ever their purpose. Their purpose is, not to learn the subject, but, upon the theory of probabilities, to hit upon the questions the examiner will ask, and thus be enabled to answer him and obtain a license." CONCERNING LITERARY STYLE.-Ruskin.-Whatever he may call himself, it is as a painter of nature with words that Ruskin is named with enthusiasm wherever men speak the English tongue. *** There is a more minute and extensive knowledge in them [his descriptions] than can be claimed for the corresponding word-pictures, either of descriptive poets, like Tennyson, Shelley, Scott, Keats and Wordsworth, or of authors who elaborately describe nature in prose, like Jean Paul Richter and Christopher North. He has such a knowledge of nature as Tennyson would have had if he had devoted himself to landscape-painting; and he has a command of words such as only the greatest authors, prose or poetical, have possessed.-From Bayne's "Lessons from My Masters." Irving. That his style was influenced by the purest English models is apparent. But there remains a large margin for wonder how, with his want of training, he could have elaborated a style which is distinctly his own, and is as copious, felicitous in the choice of words, flowing, spontaneous, flexible, engaging, clear, and as little wearisome when read continuously in quantity as any in the English tongue. This is saying a great deal, though it is not claiming for him the compactness, nor the robust vigor, nor the depth of thought, of many other masters in it. It is sometimes praised for its simplicity. It is certainly lucid, but its simplicity is not that of Benjamin Franklin's style; it is often ornate, not seldom somewhat diffuse, and always exceedingly melodious. noticeable for its metaphorical felicity. But it was not in the sympathetic nature of the author, to which I just referred, to come sharply to the point. It is much to have merited the eulogy of Campbell, that it had "added clarity to the English tongue."-From Warner's "Washington Irving." It is WE have seen books "dedicated" to great men, to lords and dukes and to personal friends of the author, but Wee Babies, a child's book recently published (New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., $2.00) eclipses them all. It is dedicated to all wee babies. Babies short and babies tall; Brown-eyed babies with lots of hair; . Babies that drink from a silver cup; Babies that laugh, and babies that talk; As babies that jump, laugh, cry and crawl, THE poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary are peculiarly endeared to the American people; and the personal character of the writers has quite as much influence in producing this effect as the intrinsic beauty of their poetry. The lives of the two sisters were so lovely in their relations to each other and to society that the memory of it lends to their verses a consecrating power. The poem "Nearer Home" has sufficient grace of its own to secure its hold upon our feelings, and yet a recollection of the exalted type of womanly virtues which was presented by the author helps it sensibly to stir the soul. And so of other sweet and familiar songs which the sisters poured out from the affluence of a true inspiration. The Poetical Works of the two singers whose names are inseparably connected are now for the first time brought together in a single volume, which is uniform with the "Household Edition" of American poets published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. It will be accorded a place among the favorite books in many libraries.-The Dial. AN English man of letters, Arthur Reade, has been collecting information as to the habits of literary men in regard to stimulants. Among the data furnished him is quite an entertaining letter from the Abbe Moigno, editor of Les Mondes. The Abbe, now over eighty years of age, has been an extremely productive writer and industrious scholar. He has published, he says, 150 volumes, small and great, and has learned twelve other languages than his own-such is his own account. But he has had a curious experience with tobacco. On one occasion, when in Munich for a few weeks, and spending his evenings with Bavarian savants, who each smoked four or five cigars and drank two or three pots of beer daily (Steinheil, the most illustrious, boasted of smoking 6,000 cigars a year), the Abbe came to smoke three or four cigars a day. He had also anew taken to snuff, so that, when preparing his calculus of variations, a very difficult mathematical work, he would empty his snuffbox (which held 25 grammes) in a day. But one day he was surprised to find himself painfully unable to recall the meaning of foreign words, and remember dates with which he had been familiar. Thereupon he formed a heroic resolution, and since August 31st, 1863, when he smoked three cigars and took 25 centimes' worth of snuff, he has, up to the 25th of June, 1882, touched neither. This was, for him, a complete resurrection, not only of memory, but of general health and well-being; he has had indefinite capacity of work, unconscious digestion, and not only perfect assimilation of food, but the ability to take more of it.—The American. The Comet.*-Notwithstanding various disadvantages of moonlight and dawn, the attentive observer of the present comet, with the unaided eye, has been well rewarded. He has noticed the slight curvature of the tail, which tells an important story. It is a well-known fact that the tails of comets in general point away from the sun. They seem to be formed of matter repelled from the head by some unknown solar force, perhaps electrical in its nature. Now, if a comet has to keep its tail pointing outward all the time it is revolving about the sun the outer end has a much larger circle to describe than the inner, and the particles as they are repelled from the head have only the slower motion, and hence are gradually left behind. Careful mathematical computations show that the curvature in one or more instances is just what would result from the centrifugal motion of the substance of the head. From this effect we infer the cause. The observed curvature is, therefore, in the nature of a proof of the materiality of comets' tails and their formation from the waste matter of the head. The curvature would naturally be backward along the path of the comet. To an observer in the plane of this path the tail would seem to be straight. One looking at it broadside, as it were, would see the curve in its true form. In all intermediate positions the apparent curvature would vary with the distance from the plane of the comet's orbit. No one who has seen our comet could fail to notice three things: (1) The curvature was very slight. (2) The convexity was on the south side. (3) The southern side was very well defined, while the northern was faint and indefinite. These facts are readily accounted for when we know, first, that the inclination of the comet's orbit to the earth's is only about 37°, or 143° as astronomers count *Abridged from an article by the author in The American, of 10 mo., 14, 1882. it, and that the motion at the present time is southerly, causing the particles to fall back toward the north. Again, our observer has noticed a dark rift extending longitudinally through the tail, which a telescope readily shows reaches to the nucleus. This dark rift indicates that the tale is tubular. We must remember that there is every reason to suppose that its transverse section is a circle and not a line, as it seems to us; that it extends toward and away from us as well as sidewise. It would therefore be the natural explanation of this dark rift to suppose that on the edges we look through a greater thickness of the walls of the tube than near the central line, for were it a solid cylinder the centre would be the brightest portion. On the southern side this wall is thin and bright; on the northern, broad and faint; this fact, which we have not seen recorded of other comets, would seem to indicate that some force existed which retarded the filling up of the centre of this tube. In many comets observers have spoken of the exceedingly well-defined band of darkness which reached out from the comet in a line exactly radial from the sun. Telescopically, the head has presented some interesting features. Two main streamers extend out, one on either side. These have been bounded on the side next the sun by arcs of circles passing through the nucleus and having their centres on either side of it. Around the whole has been observed a faint envelope of light, embracing these ares, and blending with them on their outer edge. The arcs and envelopes seem to be the origin of the tail, into which they shade by insensible gradations. The nucleus itself is ill-defined, presenting no resemblance to a star. The telescope magnifies it without adding to its total brightness, hence, it appears fainter than to the naked eye, and a casual observer is invariably disappointed. It has been oblong in form, having its greatest length in the direction of the tail. At the date of writing it has stretched out into a narrow band, pointing nearly toward the sun, the tail apparently fed from its sides. This band shows condensations in two or three points much brighter than the remaining portions, giving the appearance of a division. The parts did not seem, however, to be entirely separated. The spectroscope gives, in addition to the carbon and hydrogen which usually exist in comets, characteristic lines of sodium. Up to the present year all comets examined, including the two bright ones of 1881, gave little if any traces of any elements but the first two. But both the bright comets of this year give spectra of sodium. Its presence probably indicates much increased stability and mass. The present is also the first comet the direction of whose motion has been determined spectroscopically. Meteor observers should look out for "November meteors" on the 13th and adjacent nights. ISAAC SHARPLESS. Botany.-During this month we shall perhaps look in vain for perfect specimens of plants in bloom, unless it be the Witch-hazel, Hamamelis Virginiana, a tall shrub having its naked branches studded with clusters of yellow flowers, which may be likened to a Goldenrod. The calyx remains open after flowering, and not closed, as I stated last year. It is found in moist woods, often overhanging a stream, or several trunks rising obliquely from the same spot and thus becoming divergent above. Many plants may, nevertheless, be found in flower, though lacking the requisites of a typical specimen. Thus on some warm slope a Dandelion, Taraxacum dens-leonis, or on the roadside an Aster may be seen, in the |