Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/875

Rh of Jordan and Gilbert's Synopsis of the Fishes of North America, but with the text entirely rewritten and covering a greater geographical range than the Synopsis. By the extension of range, which brings in the faunas of Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies, the number of species included has been more than doubled. The fact to which the authors call attention, that over a hundred species have been added to the list within the time taken for printing the present volume, shows that there is still work to be done in the same field. The classification and sequence of groups adopted for this catalogue is essentially that of Dr. Theodore Gill, freely modified to suit the present purposes of the authors. In the arrangement of the families and genera they have endeavored to avoid unnatural associations and incoherent groups, even at the risk of what may seem an excessive subdivision. Among the forms commonly called fishes the authors recognize three classes—Leptocardii, Marsipobranchii, and Pisces. The present part of the work extends to twelve hundred and forty octavo pages, and contains descriptions of sixteen hundred and twenty-seven species, of which four are Leptocardii and eleven are Marsipobranchii. An atlas is to accompany the work when completed.

Mr. James Bryce has prepared an abridged edition in one volume of his able and popular work on The American Commonwealth in order to make the book more available for the unexpected demand that has arisen for it as a text-book in American colleges and high schools (Macmillan, $1.75). The abridgment is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the National Government, the State Governments, and Political Methods. In selecting the parts of the original work to be used in the single volume the author has been aided by Jesse Macy, Professor of Political Science in Iowa College. The Constitution of the United States is appended, and the volume contains lists of the Presidents, the States, and important events, together with a full and carefully made index.

The method of Cairns's Manual of Quantitative Chemical Analysis, which has now reached a third edition, is, by explaining some of the more serious obstacles to successful analysis, to teach thoughtfulness and caution, and, by giving very explicit directions in the earlier part of the course, to induce habits of precision and enable the student to proceed without further leading. The important changes that have been made in the practice of analytical chemistry since 1880, when the book was first published, has rendered a thorough revision necessary, and this has been given to it by Dr. Elwyn Waller. The editor has aimed to give descriptions and directions for such methods as are generally pursued in most analytical laboratories, with brief references to the theory of other methods, that the student may have presented to him one or two plans of procedure which find acceptance to-day, and at the same time suggestions of other plans which may lead to modifications of our present methods. Radical changes having been made in the science and practice of quantitative proximate analysis since the death of the author, all the chapters relating to that subject have been cut out, leaving only what was always the chief feature of his work, namely, mineral analysis. Both the author and the editor have been instructors in analysis at the Columbia School of Mines. (Holt, $2.)

An addition to the number of journals representing the science of chemistry in this country has been made by the establishment of The Journal of Physical Chemistry at Cornell University. It is to be issued monthly, except in July, August, and September, under the editorship of Profs. Wilder D. Bancroft and Joseph E. Trevor. The first number contains papers on Irreversible Cells, by A. E. Taylor; Chemistry and its Laws, by F. Wald; and a second paper on Ternary Mixtures, by Wilder D. Bancroft. There are also several book notices and a department of reviews, conducted by a board of six reviewers, in which are given critical digests of recently published papers bearing on physical chemistry. (The Editors, Ithaca, N. Y., $2.50 a year.)

The treatise on The Magnetic Circuit in Theory and Practice, by Dr. H. du Bois, which has been translated by Dr. Atkinson (Longmans, $4), is designed to be a systematic and critical account, from the physical