Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/437

Rh Felicitas. A Romance. By Felix Dahn. New York: William 8. Gottsberger. Pp. 208.

Explosive Materials. By M. P. E. Bertholet. New York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 180. 50 cents.

Wonders of Plant-Life under the Microscope. By Sophie Bledsoe Herrick. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 248. $1.50.

A Hand-Book of Hygiene and Sanitary Science. By George Wilson. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 510. $2.75.

Manual of Chemistry, Physical and Inorganic. By Henry Watts, F.R.S. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 595. $2.25.

The Organs of Speech. By G. H. von Meyer. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 349.

Queen Victoria. Her Girlhood and Womanhood. By Grace Greenwood. New York: John E. Anderson & Henry S. Allen. Pp. 401.

The Human Body. By H. Newell Martin, D.Sc. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 355. $1.50.

Text-Book of Popular Astronomy. By William G. Peck, Ph.B. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 330.

Zoölogy. By A. 8. Packard, Jr. Now York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 334. $1.40.

Destructive Influence of the Tariff. By J. Schoenhof. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 112.

World-Life, or Comparative Geology. By Alexander Winchell, LL.D. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 642. $2.50.

Dangers to Health. A Pictorial Guide to Domestic Sanitary Defects By T. Pridgin Teale. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 172.

History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North. By Frederik Winkel Horn, Ph. D. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 507. $3.50.

The Natural Genesis. By Gerald Massey. New York: Scribner & Welford. 2 vols. Pp. 552, 535.

Report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, 1860. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 1060, with Plates.

A Practical Treatise on Materia Medica and Therapeutics. By Roberts Bartholow. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 738.

Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1881. Pp. 840.

Cruise of the Revenue Steamer Corwin in Alaska and the Northwest Arctic Ocean in 1881. Notes and Memoranda. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 120, with Plates.



Origin of the Eastern End of Lake Erie. Mr. Julius Pohlman, starting with the hypothesis that the beds of the Great Lakes were excavated by water in pre-glacial times, has sought for the river which washed out the eastern end of Lake Erie. The discovery of the many large pre-glacial rivers, in Pennsylvania and Ohio, running into the lake-basin, explains well enough how the erosion in general has taken place. "But the most easterly of these ancient water-courses yet discovered, the Alleghany, which ran northerly past Dunkirk, does not account for the forty miles of lake-valley between that place and Buffalo, and another pre-glacial river emptying into the lake-basin near Buffalo was necessary to complete the river system which occupied and excavated the valley of Lake Erie." The maps of the lake survey show that there are no indications of rocks on the shore of the lake between the southern limit of the city of Buffalo and the Horseshoe Reef of the Niagara River, and that the land is low and level for some distance back. The northern and eastern parts of the city and the bed of Buffalo Creek are underlain by a reef of corniferous limestone, which gradually ascends toward the north. Testings that have been made during the course of excavations for canals, of the depth of this rockless land, show that no rock can be found at a less depth than eighty feet below the surface. This probable fact points to the bed, and indicates the depth of the ancient river which we are seeking for. That river could not go north or east, on account of the out-cropping corniferous limestone, but "it must have taken a westerly course through the soft shales of the Devonian epoch; and if we trace an imaginary line along the deepest portion of the eastern end of the lake from this ancient valley, in a direction a little southerly of west, we can connect our pre-glacial river with the ancient outlet of the river system of the Erie Valley opposite Dunkirk, and have a fair explanation of the origin of the eastern end of Lake Erie."

The New Standards of Time.—On the 7th of October a number of the railroads of the New England States, and on the 18th of November nearly all the important railroads of the Atlantic slope and the Mississippi Valley, adopted a new system of time-standards for the movement of their trains. The object of the change was to secure a more simple and harmonious way of calculating the time at the different stations on East and West lines. Under the time-system previously prevailing, the managers of each railroad endeavored to conform to the local time of the most important stations on its line. The result of this method of accommodation was that seventy-five different standards of time, varying apparently at haphazard from each other, were used in operating the railroads of the United States; and it was only with 