Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/730

712, or albatrosses, fulmars, shearwaters, petrels, gannets, cormorants, pelicans, etc.; similar Studies of the Sub-family Ardeinæ, of which the great blue heron, Ardea herodias, is selected as the type; and, under the heading of Contributions to the Comparative Osteology of Arctic and Sub-arctic Water-Birds, a memoir on "The Auklets."

The number of The American Journal of Psychology (E. C. Sanford, Worcester, Mass., $5 a year) which completes its second year contains three principal articles. The first of these is by Charles L. Edwards, on the "Folk-lore of the Bahama Negroes," and embodies many stories similar in character to those which have been recently obtained from the negroes of our Southern States. The collection is introduced by several pages of description of the islands and the people. The second paper is "On some Characteristics of Symbolic Logic," by Christine L. Franklin. The fourth and concluding paper of Dr. W. H. Burnham's series on "Memory, historically and experimentally considered," appears in this number. In this paper Dr. Burnham sketches the progress of recent theories. He finds that the view that "the essence of memory is a functional disposition persisting in the brain is, perhaps, the one most widely held by contemporary psychologists." He also glances at the recent experimental studies upon memory, and appends to his paper a bibliography of the most important literature of the subject.

In The Chemistry of Narcotics, a pamphlet by Prof. E. Haworth (the author, Oskaloosa, Iowa, 25 cents), a brief account is given of the preparation and chemical character of the common alcoholic beverages, chloral, the bromides, and the vegetable alkaloids. A table of percentages of alcohol in foreign and domestic alcoholic beverages is appended.

The Cosmic Law of Thermal Repulsion (Wiley, 75 cents) is an attempt to account for the tails of comets. The author's view is, that the projected matter forming the tail has been separated from the body of the comet by the radiant energy of the sun. He states the details of his hypothesis in the present essay, and quotes from many scientific authorities passages which directly or indirectly support it.

The popular lectures and discussions given before the Brooklyn Ethical Association last winter have been published in book-form under the title Evolution (James H. West, Boston). The fifteen papers on various evolutionary topics which the volume comprises were noticed in these pages when published separately.

A paper on Marine Shells and Fragments of Shells in the Till near Boston, by Prof. Warren Upham, has been published in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, Vol. XXIV. The fossils here described have been before regarded as evidence that the land in which they are found had been previously submerged beneath the sea. Instead of this, the observations of Prof. Upham go to show that the fossils were brought to their present positions from the bed of the sea on the north, by the icesheet. In the same volume is a paper on The Structure of Drumlins, also by Prof. Upham. Another recent paper by him, on Glaciation of Mountains in New England and New York, is published in "Appalachie," Vol. V, No. IV.

In a bulletin on Natural Gas in Minnesota, the geologist of that State, Prof. N. H. Winchell, reviews the geological facts and the results of experiments bearing on the question whether gas in any considerable quantity is likely to be found in Minnesota. His conclusions are, that the great formations that furnish gas in the United States are almost wholly wanting in Minnesota; that the gas which comes from shallow wells at Freeborn is confined to the drift; and that if gas is found in Minnesota in a lower formation than it has been found in anywhere else, as has been predicted, it will be something new in geology.

The publication of a treatise on the Paleontology of the Cretaceous Formations of Texas has been undertaken by Prof. Robert T. Hill, of the University of Texas, at Austin. It is to be published in installments, at twenty-five cents each. Part I, now issued, comprises descriptions of three specimens, with plates. The same author has also published Part I of a Check-List of the Invertebrate Fossils from the Cretaceous Formations of Texas, accompanied by Notes on their Geographic and Geologic Distribution. In "The