Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/432

420 and are distinguished by a mark signifying the fact; "and for these alone can the compiler be wholly responsible." To facilitate reference the work is divided into the several sections of Bibliography, Dictionaries, History, Biography, Chemistry, pure and applied, Alchemy, and Periodicals—the last section having been taken from Prof. Bolton's Catalogue of Technical and Scientific Periodicals. Notes and comments, bibliographical and explanatory, have been occasionally introduced to aid students in conceiving the character of a book or the status of its author. The Bibliography forms volume xxxvi of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections.

Mr. B. Douglas Howard, in a book entitled Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, describes his visit to the Ainus of Sakhalin, whom he characterizes as "the most ancient, distant, and least known savages surviving in Asia." There has been very little communication between this island and the rest of the world, and there will hereafter be less, as the Russians have made it a penal colony and secluded it. Mr. Howard's relations of his observations sound more like those of a globe trotter than of a profound student, and his accounts differ in several respects from those given by other writers of the Ainus of Tezo. He represents them as plunged in the lowest savagery. He also visited the Ainus in Yezo, and found them little better. Yet he thinks that through the Ainus of Yezo, with whom an intercourse exists, we may learn to understand their more primitive brethren in Sakhalin. He further attempts to elucidate the Ainu religion. (Longmans, Green & Co., New York. Price, $1.15.)

Mr. W. J. Johnston has aimed, in the preparation of his Elementary Treatise on Analytical Geometry, at an easy and gradual development of the subject. The requirements of two classes of students have been kept in view: First, students in the university colleges, by whom a limited course of the subject is read, and for whom such a course is marked out; and, secondly, candidates for mathematical honors, for whom the chapters on Trilinears, Reciprocal Polars, and Projection are included. These chapters will also serve as an introduction to the writings of Dr. Salmon. Many other features are introduced, the usefulness of which will be perceived by the student. (Macmillan & Co.)

A work on Heat, prepared by Mark R. Wright, is intended for those who have had some elementary reading on the subject, or who are able at once to attack a more advanced work, and is intended to place before such the leading facts and principles. Among its features are the incorporation of numerical examples to be worked out by the student, and descriptions of experiments to be repeated. While the author rejoices at the disappearance of the method of studying a science from a text-book alone, he suggests that too much as well as too little time may be spent over experimental science; "mental inertia is as possible in the laboratory as in the lecture room." An elementary chapter in thermo-dynamics is given, with an attempt to explain and illustrate by examples the first two laws and the meaning of Joule's and Thomson's experiments. (Longmans, Green & Co., New York. Price, $1.50.)

In connection with the system of meteorological observations established by the Smithsonian Institution, a collection of meteorological tables was compiled by Dr. Arnold Guyot, and published in 1852 as a volume of the Miscellaneous Collections. Second and third editions were published in 1857 and 1859, and a fourth in 1884—all the successive issues being revised and added to. The editions having been exhausted, the work has been recast; and the tables are divided into three parts—Meteorological Tables, Geographical Tables, and Physical Tables—each representative of the latest knowledge in its field, and independent of the others; but the three forming a homogeneous series. The first of these parts—Smithsonian Meteorological Tables—now published, is, therefore, essentially a new publication. It is conformed, as far as practicable, with the International Meteorological Tables. A large number of tables have been newly computed.

Cortlandt F. Bishop contributes to the Columbia College Series in History, Economics, and Public Law a study in the History of Elections in the United States. General and local elections are considered separately. The history is given for each of the several colonies. The qualifications required of electors