as a contribution to theology, but as acute and wise, reflections upon topics of temporal discussion, questions of everyday interest to thinking persons. It is a book of paragraphs, from a single line to two or three pages in length. They are introduced by the editor with a short account of the life of the author, and a criticism upon his works. The meditations are placed under various subdivisions, classed as thoughts upon Literature and Poets, Eloquence and Orators, History and Historians, Mind, Talent, and Character, Joy, Suffering and Fortune, Time, Life, Death, and the Future, upon the Family, Childhood and Old Age, the Country and the Peasant, Love, Friendship and Friends, and upon God and Religion. In the prelude to the thoughts we find of some of the most noted writers of France-Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Chamfort, Joubert, Vauvenarques, Swetchine-delightful short analyses and comparisons. Under Literature and Poets, there are brief and charming summaries of the characteristics of the greatest writers of the world-of Virgil and Homer, of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, of Calderon and Lope de Vega, of Boileau, of Shakespeare, Addison, Milton, Goldsmith, Scott, Moore, and Byron, of Goethe, Schiller and Klopstock, of Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, Beranger and Sainte-Beuve, and many lesser names. What he says of Eloquence and Orators includes brilliant appreciation of Demosthenes and Cicero, and in what he writes of History and the Historians are vivid pictures of Hannibal, Marius, and Angustus, of Suetonius and Tacitus and Livy, of Jeanne d'Arc and Christopher Columbus. His thoughts upon the general subjects that complete the volume are frequently crisp and wise and delightful.

"The witty man is reputed malicious," he says, "and in general wrongly. He malicious? Good heavens! smile at the epigrams which he lets fly at you and out of gratitude he will fall upon your neck!"

"However much light there may be in a mind, there is always some corner which remains in shadow."

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We love justice greatly, and just men but little." "Etymology, true etymology, is good and useful. It is profitable for the grammarian, the poet, the orator, the historian, the philosopher. Words are shells. Open the shell, you will find the kernel which will delight you."

"The muses love not tumult any more than bees love it. Musæ serena, said the Ancients.

"Let us be gentle, let us be pacific, let us be thoughtful, and the muses will hasten to us, will surround us with the sound of their wings, and perhaps will place upon our lips one of those combs of

honey which rendered Ambrose eloquent, Virgil melodious, and Plato divine."

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool." "When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy one doubts nothing."

"Man is a braggart! 'I am killing time,' he says, and it is time which is killing him."

Eloquence,' replied the ancient orator, 'is action, still action, and ever action.'

"Action! what does that signify?

"Did he mean gesture? voice? attitude? bearing? delivery? movement of ideas? the vivacity of images? the vehemence of discourse? the combined effects of the proofs? the order of reasoning? "Yes, all this at once."

Spending his life among the peasantry he has studied and knows thoroughly their character, and one of the most interesting parts of this volume is that in which he draws the peasant, depicting vividly his whole figure as stamped upon his own sensitive mind by experience, his hardness, coarseness, ignorance, selfishness, and superstition.

"The peasant loves nothing and nobody except for the use he can make of him."

"The peasant is a sullen payer, like the soil which he tills."

"The peasant never takes a walk. The peasant gives his arm to his wife, for the first and last time on their wedding day."

"The people of Tulle call our peasants peccata. This nickname contains an admiral meaning. The peasant is, indeed, sin, original sin, still persistent and visible in all its brutal simplicity, in all its simple brutishness."

Briefer Notice.

The History of Democracy' is no historical study, but sheer invective, which only escapes being the merest campaign writing by undertaking to review not alone the so-called "Democratic" party of the United States, but the popular or "democratic" parties of all nations and all times, apparently considering them successive stages of the same party, or at all events of the ssme tendency. The book is not worth serious attention. For those who read German, rather than for use in classes as a textbook, Pauline Buchheim has collected a number of Schiller's letters in a very pretty and well-printed little volume. Although not for young students, notes enough are appended to help out the reader

The History of Democracy, considered as a Party Name, and as a Political Organization. By Jonathan Norcross. New York: G. P. Putman's Sons. 1886

Schiller's Ausgewählte Briefe, Selected and Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary. by Pauline Buchheim. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

somewhat in the more idiomatic phrases and obscure references. It is an interesting collectionA neat paper edition of Carnegie's An American Four-in-hand in Britain3 is amoug the cheap books of the year, and a good selection.- "With a view of adding new oil to the recently kindled fire of interest in Russian literature," Nathan Haskell Dole who has already translated several Russian books, now translates from the French M. Dupuy's essays upon The Great Masters of Russian Literature.1 Gogol, Turgénieff, and Tolstoï"-the three already best known to readers in our language-are the three treated of in these interesting essays. The translation is timely and welcome.- Tokology is a book of advice for women on the bearing and care of children, which seems to be very widely read. It contains much wholesome advice; and though any book of this sort should be used only as a source of possibly valuable suggestions to be followed under the direction of a discriminating physician, it will, subject to this proviso, prove useful. The chapters on Dress, Diet, Exercise, and Care of Infants, are especially worthy of attention.Mr. Hutchings, the veteran guardian of Yosemite, has written and published a book upon the Valley, historical and descriptive. It has been evidently a loving service, and every word and detail of the book reveals the devotion and enthusiasm with which the writer has labored to make it, in his own phrase, "worthy of the Valley." To this end, a very pretty piece of book-making has been done, profusely illustrated, with some of the best work in process reproduction that we have seen done upon this coast. Besides reproductions of photographs, some most interesting sketches by artists, especially those of early days, have been preserved in these pages. Mr. Hutchings calls his book In the Heart of the Sierras. He adopts the spelling Yo Semite, and seems to make it clear that

3An American Four-in-Hand in Britain. By Andrew Carnegie. New York; Charles Scribner's Sons. 1886.

The Great Masters of Russian literature in the Nineteenth Century. By Ernst Dupuy. Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 1886.

the run-together form, Yosemite, has never had the slightest authority. We fear, however, that the corruption is now too thoroughly established to be displaced. Indeed, Mr. Hutchings, upon the authority of the Indians, gives Yo Hamite as the true form of the name, and, we think, establishes his point: he de fers, however, to the right of the member of the discovering party who conferred the name as Yo Semite. The book contains a history of the Valley and Mr. Hutchings' own connection with it, a full guide to the different routes, with descriptions of the Big Trees and other interesting places outside the Valley, a still fuller guide to trails and points of interest within the Valley, and some briefer notice of other places in the High Sierra. The long familiarity of the writer with his subject enables him to sprinkle the account with interesting anecdotes and reminiscences of distinguished visitors to the Valley, of incidents and pioneer episodes; and his personality, in spite of modest effort to suppress it, makes itself näively and attractively felt. Though Mr. Hutchings does not write from the point of view of an Indian sympathiser, he is yet not obtuse to their side of the loss of the Valley, and half-unconsciously, makes evident to the reader the many excellent qualities of the tribe, and the pathos of their fate. The readers of the OVERLAND are already somewhat familiar with the descriptive writings of Edwards Roberts. In the pretty little volume he has just put forth, Mr. Roberts is dealing with a con genial subject, a subject that in large measure justifies his eulogistic style. Those interested in Southeri California will read the whole book with pleasure. A larger circle will be glad to learn from its chapter on 'The House of Ramona," how close to truth are Mrs. Jackson's descriptions.

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Tokology: A Book for Every Woman. By Alice B. Stockham, M. D. Chicago: Sanitary Publishing Co. 1886. "In the Heart of the Sierras-The Yosemite Valley. By J. W. Hutchings, Pacific Press Publishing House, Oakland, 156. For sale in San Fraucisco by A, Roman.

7Santa Barbara and Around There. By Edwards Roberts. Boston: Roberts Bros. 1886.

I

Davy condescended to aid his country's cause by a treatise, in which he tries to show that beet sugar is incurably bitter to the

taste.

From Germany the industry soon extended to France, where under the powerful patronage of Napoleon it was greatly fostered, while at the same time its processes were improved under the hands of the French chemists. After the fall of Napoleon and the raising of the continental blockade, the beet sugar industry declined in Germany on account of the renewed competition; and from 1812 to 1836, France was its chief nursery, partly as a consequence of the national antipathy to England and English products. Under the stress of the competion of colonial sugar, a diligent study of the processes and strenuous efforts to improve them, more than doubled the percentage of refined sugar originally obtained from the raw material. Instead of 2 to 3, as much as 5 and 6 per cent was now obtained; and as a consequence, the production of beet sugar rose from 4,000,000 kilograms in 1829, to ten times that amount in 1835. About that time the industry received a renewed impulse in Germany, also; and under the united efforts of French and German chemists and manufacturers, it has steadily progressed ever since. At this date probably one-third of the total amount of sugar product of the world is derived from the beet, and is produced in the countries which, prior to the introduction of the beet sugar industry, were wholly dependent upon the tropics for their supply of sugar, which in consequence had remained an article of luxury accessible only to the well-to-do classes of the population.

It is interesting at this time to recall these early experiences and note the recent repetition of similar ones, when beet sugar threatened to compete with the "colonial" product almost on its own ground. For in Southern California, at least, a patch of caña dulce formed, and to some extent still forms,

a part of the home comforts of most of the native Californian cultivators; and the expansion of its culture there appears to be purely a commercial question. It was here, in the fields of Los Angeles, that the sugar beet and the sugar cane, the two competitors for the championship of the world in sugarproduction, met face to face perhaps for the first time in the history of the industry; one of the many examples afforded by the Californian climate, of the bringing together of cultures elsewhere separated by wide climatic and geographical intervals. But the real conflict was not in the cane patches and beet-fields of Los Angeles. The great Hawaiian cane plantations were, and still measurably are, on one side; on the other, the struggling beet sugar factories of the central part of the State, most of which have, at one time or another, felt the heavy hand that wielded the same weapons that were employed at the beginning of the century in the same fight, by the English colonial interest', and to which all but one-the Alvarado "Standard Sugar Refinery "-have succumbed.

But before discussing the merits of this contest and the probabilities of the outcome, it is necessary to refer briefly to some technical points in the question, which are necessary to its understanding by the general reader.

Among the rather numerous substances now known to chemists that are classed as sugars, there are three principal ones (with some minor modifications) that concern the large-scale production of sugar. These are cane sugar or sucrose (no matter whether produced from the tropical sugar cane, sorghum, maple, or sugar beet); grape sugar or glucose, the solid sugar of grapes and other fruits, and artificially manufactured

1 Including even the assertion of the inferiority of re fined beet sugar to that derived from cane, to which some color was given by the fact that in the early days of the industry on this coast, imperfectly refined beet sugar was put upon the local market. The bad name thus ac quired lingers yet, to the extent that inquiries respecting the fitness of beet sugar for preserving and putting up fruit are still annually addressed to the agricultural department of the University.

from starchy grains and vegetable fiber; and fruit or syrup sugar, also called levulose, the syrupy and non-solidifiable sugar that forms the chief body of molasses and similar products, as well as of honey, and part of most fruit juices. Of the three, the last named (syrup sugar) is probably the sweetest, equal weights being considered; but it is troublesome to handle, and difficult to obtain free from foreign flavors and other "nonsugar" ingredients; hence, it is ill adapted to most of the uses to which consumers of sugar desire to put it. The second, glucose or grape sugar, can be obtained free from extraneous matters and tastes more readily than cane sugar although not as easily; but it lacks sweetness to such an extent that to many tastes, three times the amount is required to produce the same degree of sweetness as cane sugar. It is the latter which combines the two important properties of intense and pure sweetness, and easy purification from foreign matters by virtue of its tendency to crystallization; hence its preeminent fitness for general uses. But in order to secure these properties to the full extent, it is necessary that it should be as nearly as possible free, not only from all "non-sugar" substances, but also from the other two sugars; which in some cases occur with it naturally, in others are formed in the process of manufacture. For, although cane sugar has not thus far been obtained artificially, it (as well as starch, gums, woody-fiber, etc.) can readily be transformed, first into a mixture of grape and syrup sugars, and finally into the latter alone, by continuous boiling even with water alone, but much more rapidly when heated with water containing free acids, or mineral salts. Free alkalies, such as caustic soda, potash, or lime, act but slowly on cane sugar, but quickly darken the other sugars.

Since boiling-down, or at least evaporation, constitutes an essential part of every process for obtaining sugar from natural juices, it follows from the above premises

2. As free as possible from acids and mineral salts, so as to prevent transformation into other sugars;

3. As free as possible from gummy and other substances that prevent "granulation" or crystallization'; and,

4. The evaporation should take place at the lowest temperatnre compatible with rapid evaporation.

It happens that, of all juices known, the first three conditions are most completely fulfilled by that of the Tropical Sugar Cane, which when mature contains from 18 to as much as 22 per cent. of cane sugar3, associated with from a mere trifle to as much as two per cent. of glucose, a very small proportion of gummy and albuminous substances, and a little over a fourth of one per cent. of mineral salts. This high degree of purity explains the facility with which cane sugar has for ages been produced from it by the rudest processes, and the comparatively pure and agreeable taste possessed even by the rawest manila, or even the jaggery of the ryots of India. Hence also the edibleness of the syrup sugar or "molasses" formed in the process of sugar-boiling from cane; a process which can be more simple in this case than in any other, and yet yield a fair product.

The calculated percentage of sugar in the solid contents of the juice is called its "purity co-efficient," and is a factor of prime importance, since the possible output of refined sugar from the same diminishes in a geometrical ratio as purity co efficient falls. Thus, a beet juice showing 10 per cent. of sugar and a purity co-efficient much below 70 could not be profitably worked, while if the latter factor were as high as 80, it would pass muster; and similiarly a sugar percentage as high as 15 might offset a purity co-efficient down in the sixties. But pure juices are preferred even with a lower percentage because of the greatly increased difficulty in handling them when charged with a large proportion of extraneous matters. The purity co-efficient of the trop cal cane juice ranges as high as 95, and even more.

2The sugar cane of Louisiana, according to the inv s tigations of Prof. Wiley of the United States Department of Agriculture, is of very much lower quality; but I assume with him, that this is not necessarily the case but is due to long neglect of selection of improved varieties, and other preventible causes.