Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/287

Rh about clubs that have given some attention to this field are appended.

This monograph gives, in some eighty pages, a list of the published maps of Virginia. The first map, made in manuscript about the year 1585, bears the name of John With, a painter who was sent into the colonies by Walter Raleigh to paint the red-skins and the other curiosities of the new-found country. Captain John Smith drew up his famous map in 1608. "In the boundary dispute between Virginia and Maryland in 1873 Smith's map was used as an authority, and prior to that it was the foundation upon which all the maps of Virginia were constructed." From 1608 onward the maps multiply, down to the last one, a railroad pocket guide published in 1893. Specimen reproductions, especially of the quaint older maps, would have enlivened this catalogue.

The greater part of the Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of Connecticut is devoted to the practices prevailing in the various towns and cities of the State with regard to assessments for the purpose of taxation. The bureau has evidently investigated the matter thoroughly, and has discovered considerable foundation for the always current rumors as to inequalities. The information gathered, including suggestions from local assessors, is conveniently arranged, and besides its value within the State may well serve as a guide and model to officials of other States. The bureau has also collected the appraised values of over seven hundred probated estates, finding them to confirm closely the figures given by assessors. For purposes of comparison the tax laws of Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts are here printed. Other investigations whose results are given in this volume are on the taxation of corporations, the condition of bakeshops, and the wages of factory hands.

A wonderful quantity of information concerning the various materials, processes, and applications of the photographic art is contained in the eleventh American Annual of Photography (Scovill & Adams Co., New York; paper 75, cents; cloth, $1). The aid that photography can give in surgery, mining, detecting forgery, etc, is told in special articles. Directions from which the amateur can use his prints to make a number of tasty and pleasing objects are another feature. Work with the X rays and color photography are two important recent developments that find place in the volume. There are also standard formulas, useful recipes, tables of chemicals, of capacities of lenses, of conjugate foci, of enlargement and reduction, of comparative exposures, etc., lists of photographic books and patents of the preceding year, and of American and foreign photographic societies. There are also a full almanac for 1897, postal and patent information, etc., while the large number of advertisements add no little value to the book. The volume contains over three hundred illustrations from photographs of pleasing and interesting subjects.

In his First Year in German, Mr. I Keller has sought to avoid the defects and combine the advantages of the grammatical and "natural" methods of teaching the language. His method is simple, and includes practical exercises in which the grammatical features are explained as they occur. They consist of progressive reading lessons, translating from German to English and from English to German, with explanatory notes, oral and written exercises, and conversation exercises, with grammatical paradigms in the appendix. (American Book Company, $1.)

The Report of the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1892–'93 is accompanied by three special reports of assistants in charge of especial inquiries. One of these deals with food fishes and the fishing grounds, and reports investigations into. the physical and other conditions of the inland and coast waters of the United States. Another is occupied with the statistics and methods of the commercial fisheries, and the third details the operations of the commission in propagating and distributing food fishes. Following these is an extended account by William A. Wilcox of the Fisheries of the Pacific Coast, which have recently grown to importance, especially the catching of salmon for canning. The whaling and sealing of the Pacific are also important.