Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/584

566 the direct ancestors of existing genera and species of birds, from which, in the majority of instances, they hardly departed; and they suggest questions why certain types should have perished without leaving any apparent descendants, while others, seeming to enjoy no more favorable conditions, have been preserved.

The elaborate memoir of Profs. W. K. Brooks and F. H. Herrick on The Embryology and Life History of the Macroura is based upon the studies by Prof. Brooks of the larval stages of the order continued at every opportunity during ten years, in connection with the Marine Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, and upon studies of the life histories of additional species made by himself at Beaufort, N. C, and Green Turtle Key and New Providence in the Bahamas, and (chiefly) by Prof. Herrick under his general supervision. Marine crustaceans are regarded by the author as of exceptional value for the study of the laws of larval development and for the analysis of secondary adaptations as distinguished from the influence of ancestry by reason of the greater stability of their inorganic environment as compared with that of land animals, permitting greater persistency of type; and of the more definite character of the changes that make up their life history. The memoir, of about forty quarto pages, is illustrated by fifty-seven large colored plates.

Stone and Milling are two monthly magazines the fields of which are indicated by their titles, published by the D. H. Ranck Publishing Company, Indianapolis, Ind. The tables of contents embrace a variety of information, technical, practical, and popular, on stone-quarrying and working the kinds of stone available in the arts, road-making, contracting, and building, in the former magazine; and the operations, industries, economies, financial interests, etc., connected with the art of preparing grain for food, in the latter.

A convenient epitome Sketch of the Geology of Alabama is published by Eugene Allen Smith, State Geologist, in which a general comprehensive survey of the formations is given in a small space. As appears from the table appended, the formations represented are the Archæan (crystalline schists), Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Cretaceous, the three Tertiaries, the Pleistocene, and the Recent.

The Royal Road to Beauty, Health, and a Higher Development is described in a pamphlet of 85 pages, by Carrica Le Favre, as lying through a vegetarian life. The author has complete faith in her doctrine, writes forcibly, and, together with some assertion that is only opinion, presents some strong arguments. Published by the Fowler & Wells Company. Price, 25 cents.

The Government Printing Office has published, in 1892, the Report of the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for the year ending June 30, 1889, a pamphlet of 128 pages. The year was the first one of operations as a branch of the public service distinct from the Smithsonian Institution. The inquiry respecting food fishes and the fishing grounds was continued, with more attention to details than in preceding years, the first surveys being necessarily general in their character. The most important seacoast inquiries were those conducted by the steamer Albatross in the North Pacific Ocean. On the Atlantic coast the steamer Fish Hawk was assigned to special investigations having reference to the oyster grounds of Long Island Sound and Rhode Island. Other sea work was done in the Gulf of Mexico. An essentially novel feature of the scientific work was the systematic investigation of interior waters with respect to their physical and natural-history characteristics.

Physical Education is a monthly magazine devoted to physical culture, published by the Triangle Publishing Company, Springfield, Mass., Luther Gulick, M. D., and James Naismith, editors, of which specimen numbers have been sent us. It has among its contributors some of the best-known physical culturists in the country. Some of the articles in the numbers before us are on Ventilation in the Gymnasium, by R. A. Clark, M. D.; Physical Education in its Relation to the Mental and Spiritual Life of Women; Bicycling for Women; Form in Gymnastics, by Dr. W. G. Anderson; Gymnastic Classification, and others of like bearing.

The Report of Robert T. Hill, Assistant Geologist, On the Occurrence of Artesian and other Underground Waters in Texas, Eastern New Mexico, and Indian Territory, West of