Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/582

566 fruitful in results the increased friction of modern life, especially in the sphere of emotion, reaching the conclusion that the increase is "not so much among the most intellectual as among the least intellectual and highly emotional classes of civilization." The essay is throughout suggestive and well worth perusal by those interested in one of the most important fields of scientific investigation.

remains of mosasauroid reptiles, though first discovered in Europe, were of such rare occurrence as to offer only limited opportunities for study; but they have been found in abundance in this country, and the Museum of Yale College alone has a collection containing some fourteen hundred distinct individuals, representing several families and numerous genera and species. This profusion has enabled Professor Marsh to make a very thorough examination of the group, and he has been rewarded by the discovery of several new characters, the more prominent among them being the presence of a sternum probably common to all the forms, the possession of posterior limbs, and of hyoid bones.

numbers make a volume of five hundred and twenty pages, comprising twenty-five articles, giving results of original work in the natural history, geography, physical features and resources of a portion of our Western Territories. Among others, Professors Riley, Cope, and White, Dr. Coues, Dr. Le Conte, and Mr. Henry Gannett, have each contributed to the volume.

book, the author says, has grown out of an attempt made a few years ago to give some account of English politics to a foreign guest, who was not a Christian or a European, but who at the time was reading English history for examination. Without attempting to adhere to the plan of adapting statements to so remote a mind, the author has thought it good to explain many terms which in ordinary books are assumed to be understood; and he has done it very successfully, in a plain, pleasant style, under the form of a running review of the principal events and political movements of the period embraced.

is the second of an important series of papers on American ethnology; the first, issued some time since, being an "Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages," by Professor J. W. Powell. A third is to follow on "Mortuary Observances and Beliefs concerning the Dead," by Dr. H. C. Yarrow, of the United States Army.

The study of anthropology is growing rapidly in importance and interest in this country. Vast collections of whatever may illustrate it are being made, and these thoroughly scientific papers will facilitate and direct the work. They are among the most valuable issued by the Smithsonian Institution.

author has undertaken in this little volume to describe his life in the woods, his adventures and talks, exactly as they occurred, without invention or exaggeration, and to give truthful pictures of actual summer life in the Adirondacks. By introducing the companions of his journeys, actual men of education and refinement, but who left the shop and the school behind them for a holiday, he has made his story an entertaining one.