Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/582

566 square miles of the State. The report of "Geological Work in Progress" includes an extensive notice of the Red Sandstone district with its trap ridges, which is a marked local feature, with accounts of the eruptive rocks of Sussex County, iron-mines and mining industries, plastic clays and their uses, and shore-changes. The plastic clays are worthy of especial attention, for they have been found capable of extensive application, particularly for furnishing terra-cotta building material and architectural ornaments, and promise to become most important elements in the resources of New Jersey. The "sea-side developments," or growth of summer resorts now in course of rapid expansion, are also noticed, with some account of climatic peculiarities and of agricultural development in Southern New Jersey. A chapter on drainage is illustrated with a convenient map of the water-sheds. The resources for water-supply and the character of the water are considered, whether the supply is derived from lakes and rivers or wells, dug, driven, and bored; and the water-supplies of the larger towns and several important wells are described. The map accompanying the report has been corrected up to date.

organization and objects of the Signal-Service department have been often set forth. Its chief purpose is to train a corps of officers competent to correspond by signal and give speedy and effective service in times of war and in emergencies. For that purpose primarily the training-school is kept up at Fort Whipple, Virginia, where officers are drilled for Signal-Service work. Incidentally, the service makes its value known in a variety of ways, and is the agency employed by the Government to secure the reports and forecasts of the weather. It had in operation, during the year of the present report, in the United States, 247 stations, and was receiving daily telegraphic reports from 189 stations in the United States and other countries. The net-work of its stations extends to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and over the intervening territory. "Sunset stations" have been established at a number of places, where meteorological indications are gathered from the appearances at sunset, and with the aid of the spectroscope; and the officers at these stations have acquired an accuracy in forecasting the local weather twenty-four hours in advance, the degree of which is represented by a maximum percentage of 89 for the regions west of the Mississippi Valley, and 82 for the region east of the eastern bounds of that valley. The report is filled with masses of detail and station reports.

pleasing and flattering illustration of the prosperity and the artistic taste of the fraternity of jewelers and silversmiths in the United States. The literary department comprises thirty-two of the finely printed, large quarto pages, and is occupied with articles of special interest to the fraternity and of general interest to many others; among them we notice a part of a series on the elaboration of gold and silver, and a kind of "Notes and Queries," under the title of "Proceedings of the Horological Club." The other pages are occupied with the cards of manufacturers and cuts of their designs, many of which, it is hardly necessary to say, are exceedingly handsome.

protoplasm, says the author of this treatise, possesses, in many cases at least, as it appears to the assisted eye, the power of independent, rapid movement. The motion expresses itself in a change of form and arrangement of the protoplasmic mass, the volume of which apparently remains the same. It may also be produced artificially. The present paper records the results of continued, careful, and minute studies of the manifestations of protoplasmic motion in its various forms.