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scientific papers in literary form. It is in fact a comprehensive treatise on rhetoric. Many illustrations of methods of composition are given, the resources of English literature are drawn on extensively, these selections ranging from grave to gay, from lively to severe. In making such selections the personal tastes of the author will. of course determine, and others may find reason to disapprove. No extensive disapproval is to be here expressed, but the story on page 148 is entirely lacking in humor and the poem that follows it is without merit.
How far a book of this type will improve the quality of American professional literature is yet to be determined. The reviewer does not wish to be a bird of evil omen, but a very large experience in teaching in professional schools, makes him despair of securing much improvement. In the pages of one of our leading scientific journals, an experienced professor openly defended the use of the form "data is." What hope is there that in the institution at which that man teaches there will be any encouragement for attention to ex~tct forms? It may be that the engineering profession, as yet, is more homogeneous as to racial types and preliminary training than the professions of medicine, dentistry, law and pharmacy, into which representatives of the races of southern and eastern Europe are now entering in such large numbers. If so, engineering schools will show a greater appreciation of English language and literature, thus giving a better medium upon which to cultivate the material of this book. After all, the work must begin in the home and in the elementary schools. It is especially in the latter that the rules of grammar and the principles of orthoepy and syntax should be taught. (;reat laxity prevails in this respect in American schools. Pupils are permitted to use many incorrect forms, to slur letters, to talk and write slang and to learn nmch text by rote without comprehension of meaning. Arithmetic is also very imperfectly inculcated.
Efforts at reform in these matters meet not only difficulties from the lack of syst:ematic central authority to establish standards, but there is in our own country a spirit of insubordination to such control. An assertion of individuality is a dominant motive in the land. Is it far-fetched to ascribe this to the prohibition dispute? The suggestion may excite laughter or even condemnation, but it really seems as if the struggle over the great restriction experiment has aroused an exceptionally high claim of individual rights. The emotion has broken its original bounds and led to claims of independence in other fields of human action. The resistance to parking regulations is a phase of the same spirit.
The book is to be commended as an earnest effort to improve what needs much improvement and it is to be hoped that it may find satisfactory use in the fields for which it is intended, but any considerable reform in diction in American scientific papers is, it is to be feared, as far off as naval parity.