Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/147

Rh Parker, William W., M. D., Richmond, Va. The Rise and Decline of Homœopathy. Pp. 12. Burial vs. Cremation. Pp. 8.

Peterson. Frederick, M. D. Anodal Diffusion as a Therapeutic Agent. Pp. 11.

Riddle, A. G. Washington's Birthday Address. Washington: Judd & Detweiler. Pp. 81.

Rochester Public Schools, 1889-'90. Pp. 205.

Rosse, Irving C, Washington. Clinical Evidences of Border-land Insanity. Pp. 1(5.

Salmon, David. Longmans' Primary School Grammar. Longmans. Pp. 124. 35 cents.

Sanborn, J. W. Missouri Experiment Station. Synopsis of Experiments. Pp. 40.

Shoup, Francis A. Mechanism and Personality. Ginn & Co. Pp. 343. $1.30.

Siebel, J. E. Director, Chicago. Communications of the Zymotechnic Institute. Pp. 72, with Plates.

Spencer, Herbert, and others A Plea for Liberty. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 414. $2.25.

Squire, Joseph. The Calaba Coal-field, Alabama. Montgomery: Geological Survey. Pp. 189, with Map.

Truth-Seeker Annual for 1891. New York: Truth-Seeker Co. Pp. 114. 25 cents.

Waith, William S. The Circle of Trigonometric Functions. Pp. 32.

Woodward, C. M. The Educational Value of Manual Training. O. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 95.

Woolsey, W. J., St. Paul, Minn. Prophetic Evolution. Pp. 16.



Our Sequoia Forests.—Counting as forests all areas of a thousand acres and upward, Mr. Frank J. Walker computes that there are now 37,200 acres of Sequoia forest in the United States, divided as follows: King's River forest, 7,500 acres; Kaweah River, 14,000; Tule River, 14,000; Kern River, 1,700 acres. They are all south of King's River, and nearly all of them in Tulare County, Cal., and extend over a belt of country beginning at Converse Basin on the north, and ending with the Indian Reservation forest. The groves and forests within this region are more than twenty in number, with an average distance between them of perhaps three or four miles. The southern limit of the Sequoia is the Deer Creek Grove, which contains less than one hundred and fifty Sequoias, scattered over an area of perhaps three hundred acres. Too many of these noble woods have already passed into the hands of speculators, and are doomed shortly to disappear. One tract, including two townships, has lately been saved to the public by the Vandever Bill. It embraces the Sequoia Park forest and most of the Homer Peak forest, and contains what are known as the Fresno Big Trees—among them the General Grant, which is said to be forty feet in diameter. Besides its value for the storage of waters needed for irrigation, this whole region has charming natural attractions that make it most eminently suitable for a park, of which Mr. Walker says: "The height of the Sierra, culminating in Mount Whitney, affords grand scenery of peculiar charm and great variety. Here are three Yosemites rivaling their noted prototype in many features, with a little world of wonders clustering around the head-waters of Kern, Kaweah, and King's Rivers. We will simply mention the Grand Cañon of the Kern, where, for twenty miles, the mad waters of the river are walled in with the continuous battlements of the California Alps, crowned with nameless and unnumbered domes and towers. Then, only a few miles across the divide, extends the cañon of King's River, with its wealth of impressive scenery; and some eight miles farther to the north lies the Valley of Tehipitec—the gem of the Sierra—with its wondrous dome of rock rising in rounded majesty some six thousand feet from the level of the river-cleft meadow at its feet. A view of the most impressive and characteristic scenery of the region is to be earned by scaling one of the lofty peaks of the Kaweah range. At least a hundred peaks here rise to altitudes exceeding ten thousand feet. . . . Here, standing on the crest of the Kaweah Sierra, one looks across the Grand Cañon of the Kem, and the encircling wilderness of crags and peaks is beyond the power of pen to describe. Mounts Moriache, Whitney, Williamson, Tyndall, Kaweah, and a hundred nameless peaks—the crown of our country—have pierced the mantle of green that elothesclothes [sic] the cañons below, and are piled into the very sky, jagged and bald, and bleak and hoary—a wilderness of eternal desolation."

The Custom of Potlatch.—One of the most complicated and interesting institutions of the Northwestern Indian tribes of Canada, according to Mr. Horatio Hale's report on the subject to the British Association, is what is called potlatch—the custom of paying debts and of acquiring distinction by means of giving a great feast and making presents to all the guests. It is somewhat difficult to understand the meaning of the potlatch. The author would compare its most simple 