Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/293

Rh the Santa Cruz Mountains, by George H. Ashley; Fishes of Sinaloa, by David Starr Jordan; and Contributions to Western Botany, by Marcus E. Jones. Entomology, conchology, zoölogy, and paleontology are also represented. The volume is accompanied by a frontispiece and seventy-four other plates.

The fourteenth volume of Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences testifies to considerable activity during the year 1894-'95. This volume contains papers on geological subjects by Arthur Hollick, J. F. Kemp, G. F. Matthew, W. D. Matthew, and Heinrich Ries; on biological subjects by Gary N. Calkins, Harrison G. Dyar, and George S. Huntington; while chemistry is represented by Bohuslav Brauner, botany by N. L. Britton and T. H. Kearny, Jr., astronomy by Herman S. Davis and J. K. Rees, mineralogy by G. F. Kunz, and physics by R. A. Millikan. Forty-nine plates accompany these papers. A considerable number of papers that were read during the season either appear elsewhere or have not been published.

Again Wurtz's Elements of Modern Chemistry comes to us in a revised (the fifth American) edition (Lippincott, $1.80). Dr. Greene, the translator, has associated Dr. H. F, Keller with himself in this revision and enlargement, which is designed to bring the book thoroughly up to date. The volume now consists of 808 duodecimo pages, and contains 136 cuts.

Bulletin No. 119 of the U. S. Geological Survey is A Geological ReconnoissanceReconnaissance [sic] in Northwest Wyoming, by George H. Eldridge (Geological Survey, 10 cents). It gives a sketch of the topography and general geology of the region, and points out the chief features of its economic geology. First among its useful minerals is a fair quality of coal; petroleum, building stone, brick clays, and a small quantity of gold are also found.

In a treatise entitled The Constitution and Functions of Gases, the Nature of Radiance, and the Law of Radiation, the author, Severinus J. Corrigan, gives a technical presentation of his theory of gases, the basal concept of which is that the atoms of which each molecule of gas is composed revolve about the center of the molecule. He holds that his theory enables him to demonstrate the existence of some heretofore unknown properties and functions of gases, to determine the probable nature and the properties of the luminiferous ether and the effective temperature of the sun, and to indicate the probable origin of all thermal, electric, and magnetic forces. (Printed by the Pioneer Press, St. Paul.)

A problem which is receiving increasing attention of late years, namely, what to read, is considered by W. M. Griswold in A Descriptive List of Books for the Young (the author, Cambridge, Mass.). Biography, Geography, History, Exploration, Natural History, Poetry and Fiction, Amusements and Occupations, and Literature are the chapter headings. "Natural Science" is disposed of in one page, seven works being recommended. Considering the broad field which this title is usually supposed to cover, the treatment seems a trifle inadequate. That branch of knowledge which has produced the steam engine, the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the printing press, modern astronomy, and chemistry, which is supplying material every day tending toward solutions of some of the still numerous unsolved problems of existence—in fact, which is the great motive force behind modern civilization—ought certainly to be represented by more than one page in a list that gives thirty-three pages to fiction.

Among the many desirable winter resorts which are readily accessible to the inhabitant of the eastern United States, there is perhaps none in which more natural beauty and historic interest are combined with an equable temperature than the Windward Islands. It was on one of them that Columbus first set foot in the New World, and since then they have had a most varied and unique history. In a little book of descriptive travel. Cruising among the Caribbees (Scribners, $1.50), Charles A. Stoddard, of the New York Observer, has given an attractive and interesting account of a winter visit to this curious little group. A general description of each island, both as regards topography, industries, and inhabitants, is given "in the rough." Various queer customs and superstitions and bits of myth and folklore are recounted, and the whole is woven in with