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ositions of solid geometry photographs are presented of actual models of figures, and this feature alone renders the work unique; the aid to be derived from these visual helps is in no wise to be underrated, and the proof of many a theorem which is absolutely bereft of objective reality to the average imagination is here flooded with light. These models of which we have reproduced three specimens subserve a definite physiological function in the teaching of geometry, for it is on this base

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that the world of conceptual form has been constructed. In an appendix to the book the authors have added an "Introduction to Modern Geometry," treating of such subjects as inversion, the radical axis and coaxal circles, projection, the nine points circle, duality, etc., and which will be useful in affording the student some conception of the new methods.

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It is a pleasure to notice so sound and promising a work as Beman and Smith's new Elements of Algebra for high schools, normal schools, and academies. Within the brief compass of four hundred and twenty-one pages these authors have applied some of the more important devices of modern algebra to the purposes of elementary instruction with what bids fair to be success. The remainder theorem, the notion of functions, the graphic representation of complex numbers, the graphic solution of equations, synthetic division, symmetry and homogeneity in factoring, elementary determinants, etc., of which one usually sees little or nothing, are here brought within the reach of the young student, to the great augmentation of his power. On the principle that the new should be introduced where needed, the methods referred to are for the most part placed in the body of the work; for example, the consideration of complex quantities before quadratics and the remainder theorem before factoring. This latter subject has received most satisfactory treatment in the book; being of central importance, it is applied practically at every step to the solution of equations, and is used again and again in various ways "until it has come to be a familiar and indispensable tool." Altogether, the exposi

1 Elements of Algebra. By Wooster Woodruff Beman, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Michigan, and David Eugene Smith, Principal of the State Normal School at Brockport, New York. Boston: Ginn & Company. 1900. Pages, 430. Price, $1.12.

tion is as practical as it is rigorous. The use of books of this type will do much to lift our high-school instruction to more rational planes, and it is to be hoped that

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DIAGRAM FOR EXPANDING A THIRD

ORDER DETERMINANT.

GRAPHIC SOLUTION OF AN EQUATION
OF THE THIRD Degree.

(From Beman and Smith's Elements of Algebra.)

the necessary jolt to official and pedagogic inertia may be given to admit of their widespread introduction.

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We have finally to acknowledge the receipt of several new volumes of the series of German text-books edited by Professor Schubert,' of Hamburg, who is well known to our older readers as a contributor to The Open Court and The Monist. These works, published by G. J. Göschen, of Leipsic, are with few exceptions quite unique in type, and vary so considerably from the books commonly in use in America that our teachers will profit by possessing them. It is the purpose of the series to cover the entire field of pure and applied mathematics, including the more abstract physical sciences like astronomy, mechanics, thermodynamics, and optics; and while many of the works are of an advanced character, in the main their modes of presentation are as simple as the subjects admit. The following is a list of the titles that have already appeared; Elementare Arithmetik und Algebra (Arithmetic and Algebra), by Prof. Hermann Schubert, Hamburg. (Price, Mk. 2.80); Elementare Planimetrie (Plane Geometry, including the fundamental notions of modern geometry), by Prof. W. Pflieger, Münster. (Price, Mk. 4.80); Ebene und sphärische Trigonometrie (Plane and Spherical Geometry), by Dr. F. Bohnert, Hamburg. (Price, Mk. 2); Algebra (determinants and theory of numbers), by Dr. Otto Pund, Altona (Mk. 4.40); Ebene Geometrie der Lage (Plane Geometry of Position), by Prof. Rudolf Böger of Hamburg (Mk. 5); Analytische Geometrie der Ebene (Plane Analytic Geometry), two volumes, by Prof. Max Simon, Strassburg (Price, Mk. 10); Elemente der darstellenden Geometrie (Descriptive Geometry), by Dr. John Schroeder, Hamburg (Mk. 5); Differentialgleichungen (Differential Equations), by Professor Schlesinger, Klausenburg (Mk. 8.00); Praxis der Gleichungen (Solution of Numerical Equations), by Prof. C. Runge, Hanover (Mk. 5.20); Wahrscheinlichkeits- und Ausgleichungsrechnung (Calculus of Probabilities, etc.), by Dr. Norbert Herz, Vienna (Mk. 8); Analytische Geometrie der Flächen zweiten Grades (Analytic Geometry of Surfaces of the Second Order), by Prof. Max Simon, Strassburg (Mk. 4.40).

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1 Sammlung Schubert. Forty volumes already announced. Prospectus on application. Address, G. J. Göschen, Verlagsbuchhandlung. Leipzig, Germany.

SISTER SANGHAMITTA.

Sister Sanghamitta has arrived in Chicago, where she will stay a few months. She is on a visit to the United States, partly to see her family, partly to rouse the interest of the people of this country in her work, and partly to gather new strength for the continuation of her labors in the far East.

One would think that a lady of title, born in the pale of the Roman Church, who renounces her home to go as a missionary and teacher in the garb of a Buddhist nun to a distant country beyond the sea, must be an eccentric character, perhaps restless or even of an irritable disposition. But such is not the case.

No one who meets her can fail to be impressed with her dignified demeanor, which betokens the calm self-possession of a mind that knows its aims and has acquired perfect pacification and composure.

Sister Sanghamitta, formerly known in the circles of Honolulu as the wife of His Excellency Señor A. de Souza Canavarro, renounced, it is true, her home, but what she gave up was society life, not her duties as wife and mother. Her children, three sons and a daughter, are scattered. Her only daughter entered a religious order of the Episcopalian Church. One of her sons is a mining engineer in California; another is in the employ of the Southern Pacific Railway; the third one, the only child of her second husband, the count, was educated by her until he could go to college. He is now a student in the Punhaho College, Honolulu. Señor Canavarro is in the diplomatic service of Portugal. For the last ten years or more, husband and wife have lived apart, the separation being partly forced upon them by the count's prolonged absences on his official duties; but the two have continued to remain in amicable relations, and even now, since Señora Canavarro has renounced the world and her title, they are the best of friends and have not ceased to keep up a correspondence.

When her youngest son entered college, the mother's life was reduced to the social formalities of her position, and feeling the emptiness of society life, she desired to make herself useful to the world and to sink her personality in some helpful work for the good of mankind. She had done charitable work at home, but that did not satisfy her; she wanted to cut herself loose from the limitations of her social position and start an entirely new life. She therefore decided to go to the far East, the cradle of religious and philosophical thought.

When asked why she became a Buddhist nun, Sister Sanghamitta answered: "Because I am a Buddhist; but when I became a Buddhist I did not renounce Christianity. I am a Christian and will remain a Christian; but my Christianity widened, and my faith has expanded. I have not lost Christ by understanding Buddha. The spirit is the same in Buddhism and in Christianity."

So.

Sister Sanghamitta renounced her home, but she did it because peculiar circumstances of her life, which it is not for us to judge, gave her the freedom to do She is far from encouraging wives to leave their husbands or mothers to neglect their children. On the contrary, she says that she has repeatedly upon certain occasions when women have showed an inclination to leave their homes, insisted that it was their duty to stay with their husbands, and as for doing service in the far East, she declares: "I have grown into the work, or rather the work has grown into me; but when I see the conditions in the United States, for instance the neglected negro in the South and his lack of education, I would say to the women of America: 'Do not go to India; stay at home; you have duties here which claim

your first attention.' But while Americans should not neglect their duties at home, they might sympathise with my work abroad and be interested in the conditions such as I found them as well as in the way in which I hope to relieve part of the suffering caused by neglect and ignorance."

Sister Sanghamitta has assumed a name which is sacred to the Buddhists of Ceylon. Sanghamitta was the daughter of Asoka, the Buddhist emperor of the third century B, C., famous mainly on account of the rock inscriptions which he ordered to be chiseled in various parts of India. He sent Buddhist missionaries to the Diadochian kingdoms, among them to that of Ptolemy of Egypt and to Antioch of Syria, and convened the first Religious Parliament in the valley of the Ganges. When the Singhalese, having been converted to Buddhism, requested Asoka to send religious teachers to their island, his son Mihinda and his daughter Sanghamitta, both having embraced a religious life, established themselves in Ceylon. Here Sanghamitta distinguished herself as a thera (i. e., a teacher), founding schools and orphanages and forming a centre from which missionaries went forth to Burma and Siam.

Señora Canavarro adopted the name of this Buddhist saint because she proposed to do the same kind of work in the same spirit. During her stay in Ceylon she was the Mother Superior of the Sanghamitta Convent at Colombo, which included an orphanage as well as a day school, a report of which with pictures of the site of the convent and of the Mother Superior in the midst of her scholars appeared some time ago in The Open Court, 1899, No. III., pp. 513. Her children call her Nona ama, or in English “Lady Mother," a name which has universally been adopted by the people of her new home.

Sister Sanghamitta will return to the East via England, where, in our opinion, she ought to be able to arouse much sympathy for her work, for England is directly and politically, while we are only indirectly and on general humanitarian principles, interested in the elevation of the women of the British dependencies.

Sister Sanghamitta will presumably not go back to Ceylon but will locate in Calcutta, because there, she says, she is more needed, and there the misery of the native women is greatest.

Our best wishes accompany her, for we are convinced that she can accomplish a work for which very few persons are adapted. Perhaps there is no one else who could do the same things that she does; and undoubtedly in her own quiet way and with her practical methods she will sow seeds of blessing in India, the fruits of which will be plenty and grow ever more plentiful in the time to come.

PÈRE HYACINTHE IN THE ORIENT.

P. C.

Father Hyacinthe has started with his wife, Madame Loyson, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Their original plan had been, as he proclaimed in a conference given at Paris at the time of the Exposition, to hold meetings of brotherly union on the spot sacred to three religions,-that of the Jews, the Christians, and the Mussulmans, to emphasise the common points of the three faiths, and, while not slurring their differences, to offer them an opportunity of meeting and exchanging opinions on religious topics. Father Hyacinthe has done much in behalf of the Mussulmans, and has called attention to their religious sincerity, their wonderful faith in God, and their deep religious earnestness. He is highly esteemed by the Sultan, and it was almost a foregone conclusion that on the strength of his personal relations with the Sublime Porte permission would be given by the Turk

ish government to hold the conferences as proposed, at Jerusalem. But the project is as yet premature, and since Paris could not have a religious parliament, but only congresses on the history of religion, we need not be surprised that the government of the Sultan should have regarded Father Hyacinthe's plan as unfeasible. Father Hyacinthe and his wife were received at Court. Madame Loyson visited the Harem, and both she and her husband were treated with unusual hospitality and es

teem.

It would seem, however, as if some definite influence had been thwarting their plans. Although the Mussulmans have full confidence that Father Hyacinthe would hold these meetings in the spirit of the Religious Parliament, and would not take advantage of the occasion to stir up dissent and ill-will, still confidence in the Christians generally has not as yet reached that plane where the Sublime Porte will allow such a step to be taken. In February, Father Hyacinthe and his wife were in Athens, where Père Hyacinthe spoke in the hall of Parnassus on "St. Paul on the Areopagus," on which occasion the Greek court, including Her Majesty the Queen, members of the University, ministers of state, and the aristocracy of Athens were present, while hundreds of people were turned away.

Father Hyacinthe and his wife were received in the Orient with open arms by the dignitaries of the Greek Church, in both Constantinople and Athens. They write full of sympathy for the Oriental Christians, and glory in the spirit of the Eastern Church on the classical soil of Greece, "where the gods are dead, but the Christ is risen."

The pilgrims propose to celebrate the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem, and our best wishes accompany them. No doubt they will be received with the same cordiality by the Mussulmans, Jews, and Christians of the Holy City, as was shown them at Constantinople and Athens.

THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN THE ROMAN CHURCH.

To the Editor of The Open Court.

Permit me to call your attention to a misstatement published in your March number under the headline "Moslem and Catholic Conceptions of Animals." The author, Mr. Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco, speaking about Dr. Corrigan's approbation of a catechism, in which humanity to animals is taught, makes this surprising remark: "I believe this is the first time a Roman Catholic prelate has inculcated any such teaching, etc."

I say it is surprising to me, as it discriminates the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Would you please consult Erklärung des mittleren Deharbeschen Katechismus zunächst für die mittlere und höhere Kasse der Elementarschulen, by Dr. Jacob Schmitt, of the Priesterseminar of St. Peter, Freiburg in Breisgau, and sub pede paginæ 301, etc., Vol. II., you will find as thorough an exposition of the relations of a Catholic to dumb animals as any sensible man, Mr. Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco included, will approve of. The work mentioned is both approved and recommended by the Archbishop of Freiburg. The copy bears the date of the year 1889, and being in its seventh edition is reasonably supposed to have been approved, too, by some one in its first edition. Referring to the first volume, I see that its first edition bears the approbation of Bishop Lottar Kuebel, dated Freiburg, July 6, 1870.

Is it, then, not an imposition upon the intelligent readers of your publication

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