Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/871

Rh from deep wells; to spraying oil into petroleum furnaces: as a stirrer, cooler, etc., in various chemical manufacturing processes; in pneumatic elevators, cranes, and hoisting machinery; in pneumatic transmission tubes; in refrigerating and ventilating; in the propulsion of cars; in the purification of water supplies; and in various other operations in which compressed air appears as a power, "ever ready to do our bidding, summoned or dismissed by the simple turning of a valve."

In his Contributions to the Morphology of Cladoselache (Cladodus)—a fossil shark—considerable attention is given by Bashford Dean, of Columbia College, to the development of the fins and of the heterocercal structure. (Published by Ginn & Co., Boston.)

The Eighth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor—for 1892—relates to industrial education, and comprises the results of inquiries on the subject made at home and abroad. The schedule of questions under which the information was obtained covered a wide scope, and included such topics as the age of the student workman, the occupations he had followed, the nature of his previous training, his proficiency in the use of tools and material, whether he attained an average degree of skill and efficiency in the use of tools quicker than those who had not had manual or trade training, whether he had acquired greater economy in the use of materials, whether he was more proficient in the things that indicate mental cultivation, whether he promised to become a more intelligent workman, whether he received better compensation than persons not coming from the technical schools, and many other points. In its original work the department has received the aid of several men—experts and specialists—not generally employed by it, to whom acknowledgment is made by name. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner.

Number 4 of Volume V of Studies from the Biological Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University contains four papers. The first and most extended of these is an account of An Undescribed Acraniate: Asymmetron Lucayanum, by E. A. Andrews. The creature is a small lancelet found in the Bahamas. Maynard M. Metcalf furnishes for this number Contributions to the Embryology of Chiton, a first paper, and Dr. John P. Lotsy contributes the beginning of an opus on The Formation of the So-called Cypress Knees. The fourth paper is a brief statement on The Origin and Development of the Stichidia and Tetrasporangia in Dasya Elegans, by B. W. Barton. The several papers are accompanied by plates and figures.

The sixth special report of the United States Commissioner of Labor, Hon. Carroll D. Wright, is an account of The Phosphate Industry of the United States. This industry is carried on in South Carolina and in Florida, having become established first in South Carolina, and extends somewhat into adjoining States. The report describes these two chief fields separately, giving the geology of each, an account of the methods and machinery employed in mining each of the several kinds of phosphate rock, statements of analyses, and general observations. There are also detailed statistics as to rates of wages, prices of machinery, royalties to the State in South Carolina, freight charges, and other elements in the cost of production, the quantities consumed in a term of years, etc. The report is illustrated with several photographic views and diagrams, and two folded maps.

An article by Arthur Hollick, reprinted from the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, on Additions to the Palæobotany of the Cretaceous Formation on Long Island, describes forty-six species of plants (leaves) found in this formation, additional to the ten species described in a previous paper. Of these, nine species are new. An accompanying paper—Some Further Notes on the Geology of the North Shore of Long Island—embodies a discussion of the "preglacial" or "yellow gravel" of the district named, and its probable relation to the cretaceous of New Jersey.

At an educational conference on geography held in Chicago in December, 1892,W. M. Davis, C. F. King, and G. L. Collie were appointed to prepare a selected list of topographical maps published by the various Government bureaus, making special mention of such sheets as might best illustrate the physical features of our country. It was desired that the list should be distributed among school superintendents and teachers as an aid in securing for the high schools the specified maps, together with the map of