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contents of this volume consist of some twenty reports on various subjects connected with American fishes and fisheries, including the taking of shell-fish. Among the more extended papers is one on the salmon and salmon fisheries of Alaska, by T. II. Bean, which is copiously illustrated with views and maps. As the salmon fisheries of Alaska are said to be more valuable than the seal fisheries, the act of Congress ordering the commissioner to make this investigation, with a view to protecting the industry, would seem to be a wise one. There is a Report upon a Physical Investigation of the Waters off the Southern Coast of New England, by William Libbey, Jr., accompanied by a large number of tables and temperature charts. Other notable papers are, A Reconnaissance of the Streams and Lakes of the Yellowstone National Park, by David Starr Jordan, with views of streams and cataracts; Notes on the Crab Fishery of Crisfield, Md., by Hugh M. Smith; and Notes on the Oyster Fishery of Connecticut, by J. W. Collins, the two last named also being well illustrated.

the year covered by this report, work was prosecuted in the many divisions of the survey already established, and in the new division of irrigation, created to perform the new duties assigned to the survey by Congress at the beginning of the year. The publications printed for the survey were one annual report, two quarto monographs, nine bulletins, and one annual statistical volume. In accordance with a plan promulgated by the director in December, a conference on map publication was held in January, at which a unit of publication, a system of nomenclature, and sets of colors and patterns for geological maps were determined upon. The decisions reached, and plates showing the colors and patterns, are inserted in the report. The director's report is followed by administrative reports of the heads of divisions, and by these papers: General Account of the Freshwater Morasses of the United States, with a Description of the Dismal Swamp District of Virginia and North Carolina, by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler; The Penokee Iron-bearing Series of Michigan and Wisconsin, by the late Roland Duer Irving and Charles Richard Van Hise; The Fauna of the Lower Cambrian or Olenellus Zone, by Charles D. Walcott. The papers are illustrated by ninety-eight plates and many figures and maps.

The report on irrigation is bound separately, and describes the first year's work in this field. The area of the arid region of the United States is about 1,300,000 square miles—one third of the whole country. Major Powell estimates that 150,000 square miles of this, equal to half the present cultivated area of the country, is so favorably situated that it may be reclaimed by irrigation within a generation. The efforts of the persons assigned to the irrigation survey were directed during the year to ascertaining the whereabouts of irrigable land most eligible for redemption and segregating it for homestead settlement; to determining the amount of available water, the best locations for reservoirs and canals, the seepage, the evaporation, and the vested rights in short, the most economical method of bringing the land and the water together. The details of this work are set forth in the report.

process of training the mind is here presented in a thoroughly methodical manner. The author divides his treatise into six parts, the first five of which deal respectively with the education of the perceptive powers, the representative powers, the thought powers, the emotions, and the will powers. These several subjects are systematically divided and subdivided, and under each subdivision the author tells in terse, vigorous sentences just what the teacher should do. For an example of his method take the following, from the chapter on Culture of the Perceptive Powers:

Habits of Exact Observation.—'These habits should be formed in early life. Discriminations