Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/288

278 The volume includes also a report on the work of the steamer Albatross and a descriptive catalogue of the collections of the Albatross made in 1890 and 1891. A number of views and other plates illustrate the several papers. The volume for 1893–’94 contains reports on the same general inquiries as its predecessor, and among its special papers are a description of the exhibit of the commission at the World's Columbian Exposition, The Whitefishes of North America, The Fishes of the Missouri River Basin, A Review of the Foreign Fishery Trade of the United States, and a List of Publications of the Commission from its establishment.

Volume XXX, Part IV, of the Annals of the Harvard Observatory is devoted to a Discussion of the Cloud Observations made at the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, by H. Helm Clayton. Mr. Clayton begins with a historical sketch of cloud nomenclature which introduces his statement of the new systematic nomenclature adopted for the Blue Hill Observatory. The names devised at Blue Hill are designed to specify the form, altitude, and origin of the clouds. After considering briefly the methods of cloud formation and the relations of clouds to rainfall and to cyclones, Mr. Clayton gives an account of the annual and diurnal periods in the wind and the cloud movements that have been found from the Blue Hill observations. Other topics treated are the movements of the wind and clouds at different heights in cyclones and anticyclones, cirrus motions, and the velocity of storms. Some notes on the use of cloud observations in weather forecasting are added, and there is an appendix of tables and diagrams.

G. P. Putnam's Sons are now presenting to the public Volume II of Books and their Makers during the Middle Ages, by George Haven Putnam. In this new volume Mr. Putnam recounts the vicissitudes of two centuries' books and bookmakers—the trials and triumphs of those first ambitious, determined little companies of printer-publishers who, confronted ofttimes by the mighty odds of church and state, yet wielded so bravely and untiringly their new-found weapon that echoes of their resounding blows for truth and liberty still ring in the ears of men. Mr. Putnam dwells with emphasis and at some length on certain of the early printer-publishers of the Reformation period, selecting as representatives of that class the Kobergers in Nuremberg, Froben in Basel, the house of Plantin in Antwerp, Caxton in Bruges and in London, the Elzevirs in Leyden and Amsterdam, "and the famous families of the Estiennes or Stephani." The author modestly disclaims attempts at dramatic arrangement or presentation of his subjects, saying, as with regard to Luther, that he is "not concerned with Luther as a Reformer, as a fighter, or as a Christian hero, but simply with his work and his relations as an author"; nevertheless, there is much that is of deepest historic and dramatic interest to be found throughout the book. The volume is beautifully put together. With its plain, rich binding of dark red, its uncut linen pages, and clear type, it is a fitting specimen of what books and bookmakers have attained to in this day and age. (Price, $2.50.)

German Scientific Reading, compiled by H. C. G. Brandt and W. C. Day (Holt), embodies an excellent idea. Students of science taking up German, without caring to linger long over its literature, but wishing to acquire rapidly the facility of reading German scientific prose, will find here an adequate answer to their wants. The extracts, mostly by well-known German scientists, have been chosen for the simplicity of their diction and the value of the information they impart. Covering a wide range of sciences, they might prove as interesting reading to a class of general students as to specialists. Some twenty pages of descriptive prose, by those masters of style, Goethe and Humboldt, enliven the book by their literary quality. The notes are adequate, and the vocabulary "is intended to contain every word in the text, simple or compound, literary or technical." This collaboration of two specialists, professors respectively of German and of chemistry, has produced a Reader that should recommend itself to German teachers and classes in general.

Another portion of Weisbach's great work on mechanics, as revised by Hermann, dealing with The Mechanics of Pumping Machinery has been translated (Macmillans, $3.75). It is designed for the use of engineers and students of engineering; hence,