Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/142

132 memoirs on all branches of natural science, and notes on the occurrence and habits of local plants and animals. While practical work and research are especially cultivated and encouraged, the æsthetic is not disdained, and we find the "Bulletin" as bright on that side as it is instructive on the other. Among the papers which may be mentioned as of general interest are Mr. Cowell's study of the "Adventives"—plants that have been brought, by the railroads and other means, from distant points—that have made their appearance in the stock-yards at East Buffalo, and Professor Linden's account of prominent objects of scientific interest within convenient access of the city and its neighborhood.

report is accompanied by the itinerary of Colonel James F. Gregory, and a geological and botanical report by Surgeon W. H. Forwood. The expeditions centred around the Yellowstone National Park. General Sheridan recommends an enlargement of the park by extending it about forty miles east and ten miles south, and making it a national game reservation, within which the killing of game shall be prohibited. Colonel Gregory's journey resulted in a demonstration of the practicability of the route into the park from the forks of Wind River, by way of Lincoln Pass, the valleys of the Gros Ventre and Snake Rivers and Lewis's or Lake Fork of the Snake River. Surgeon Forwood's report illustrates the general features, natural history, and resources of the regions explored.

as used by the author in connection with a college education, means chiefly work pursued in subjects embraced in college instruction; and, inasmuch as the major part of the college course is made up of linguistic, literary, historical, and philosophical studies, the topics of inquiry are ordinarily drawn from those fields, as well as from physical science, in connection with which the term is more commonly used. The essential character of the work is that it consists in and is based upon direct personal observation and actual examination, together with inductions suggested by the facts investigated and discovered, made independently by the inquirer and without outside help. In the recorded results of the studies, the matter of chief consequence will be the earnest, independent work, the exact observation, and the hard thinking that they represent. The manner in which research of this kind is furthered and encouraged at the German universities and seminaries is described; the question whether similar methods can be applied at American institutions is answered in the affirmative; and observations and suggestions are added as to the manner in which the applications may be made.

is an attempt to give intelligibility to one of those mysterious documents which have been left to us from the former masters of Central America; from the people who probably built some of the cities the ruins of which are numerous in that region, and were the authors of the inscriptions of Palenque. The manuscript, or Codex Troano, was so called by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, after the gentleman, Don Juan de Tro y Ortolano, of Madrid, a descendant of Hernando Cortez, in whose possession he found it. It is written, like the two other Maya codexes which have been chromo-lithographed and published, on paper manufactured from the leaves of the maguey plant. In form, it was folded into thirty-five folds, like the panoramic books of illustrations or "souvenirs," which are sold at the watering places, and was written on both sides of the folds, giving seventy pages. The inscriptions consist of lines and columns of characters and numerals occupying the top and left side of the page, and inframing, in the rest of the space, symbolical or descriptive figures. Dr. Thomas, who acknowledges that his investigation is not as complete as he