Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/940

850 and to the various features of the land produced by them. There is also a chapter on the reciprocal influences of man and Nature, and one on economic products. Most of the examples are drawn from the United States. There are four appendixes devoted respectively to meteorological methods, topographic maps, suggestions to teachers, and questions on the text. The volume is copiously illustrated with photo-engravings of varying degrees of distinctness, maps and diagrams, and a list of reference books is given at the end of each chapter.

In his First Year in French, designed for young pupils (American Book Co., 50 cents), L. C. Syms has aimed to unite the conversational and the translation methods of teaching the language. Directions for the use of the book are given, and French-English and English-French vocabularies are appended.

The same publishers have issued the first part of a series of simple French readings under the title Contes et Légendes (60 cents), by H. A. Guerber, author of Myths of Greece and Rome, etc. With the exception of the first one of the series these stories are not likely to be known to American pupils. There is a vocabulary.

The technique of the organic chemical laboratory is a considerable and somewhat intricate body of knowledge. Through oral instruction the student becomes acquainted with those devices and forms of apparatus required for common operations, getting, where there is a choice of processes, the one which his instructor has had the best success with. When he comes to practice his profession he gathers others as he has occasion for them from the various journals for the publication of chemical researches, and sometimes fails to find what he wants at the right time. In order to make such knowledge conveniently accessible, Dr. Lassar-Cohn, of Königsberg, several years ago prepared a Laboratory Manual of Organic Chemistry, from the second edition of which Prof. Alexander Smith, of Chicago, has made a translation (Macmillan, 8s. 6d., $2.25). It groups processes generally applicable under such heads as crystallization, distillation, extraction, determination of melting points and of molecular weights, sealed tubes, and sublimation. In this part of the work a large number of pieces of apparatus are described and some forty are figured. About three fourths of the volume is devoted to special processes of condensation, the preparation of esters, halogen compounds, nitro-derivatives, and other substances, oxidation, reduction, saponification, etc. There is also a chapter on organic analysis. The volume is indexed and has a table for finding the year of any volume of the chief chemical journals.

From the Department of the Interior we have received Volumes XXIII and XXIV, consisting of monographs from the United States Geological Survey. The first of these deals with the Geology of the Green Mountains in Massachusetts. The general structure and correlation is first considered, and then Hoosac Mountain and Mount Greylock are taken up individually. There are many valuable plates and maps to illustrate the test. Volume XXIV is entitled Mollusca and Crustacea of the Miocene Formations of New Jersey. The work seems to have been done with care, and the relation of the paleontology of New Jersey to the structural conditions prevailing in other parts of the United States makes it of national interest. Unusually good illustrations are numerous.

Volume XIV, for 1894, of The United States Fish Commission Bulletins, contains, as these publications regularly do, the results of a large number of careful observations on the life history and habits of American fish in all parts of the country. Among many interesting papers we especially note the following: Notes on Two Hitherto Unrecognized Species of American Whitefishes, by Hugh M. Smith, M. D.; On the Appliances for collecting Pelagic Organisms, with special reference to those employed by the United States Fish Commission, by Z. L. Tanner, United States Navy; Feeding and Rearing Fishes, particularly Trout, under Domestication, by William F. Page; and A Statistical Report on the Fisheries of the Middle Atlantic States, by Hugh M. Smith, M. D.

The Stark Munro Letters, by A. Conan Doyle, is an attractive little volume of 385 pages (Appletons, $1.50). It is an account of the troubles and difficulties which a young physician. Dr. Stark Munro, had to overcome at the outset of his career. The story is told in a series of letters from the