Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/141

Rh Sulphur Springs, Montana; A Fossil Egg from South Dakota (No. 5), by O. C. Farrington, relative to the egg of an anatine bird from the early Miocene; and Contributions to the Paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Series (No, 6), by W. N. Logan, in which seven species of Scaphites, Ostrea, Gasteropoda, and corals are described. In the Zoölogical Series, Preliminary Descriptions of New Rodents from the Olympic Mountains (of Washington) (No. 11), by D. G. Elliot, relates to six species; Notes on a Collection of Cold-blooded Vertebrates from the Olympic Mountains (No. 12), by S. E. Meek, to six trout and three other fish, four amphibia, and three reptiles; and a Catalogue of Mammals from the Olympic Mountains, Washington, with descriptions of new species (No. 13), by D. G. Elliot, includes a number of species of rodents, lynx, bear, and deer.

Some Notes on Chemical Jurisprudence is the title given by Harwood Huntington (260 West Broadway, New York; 25 cents) to a brief digest of patent-law cases involving chemistry. The notes are designed to be of use to chemists intending to take out patents by presenting some of the difficulties attendant upon drawing up a patent strong enough to stand a lawsuit, and by explaining some points of law bearing on the subject. In most, if not all, cases where the chemist has devised a new method or application it is best, the author holds, to take out a patent for self-protection, else the inventor may find his device stolen from him and patented against him.

A cave or fissure in the Cambrian limestone of Port Kennedy, Montgomery County, Pa., exposed by quarrymen the year before, was brought to the knowledge of geologists by Mr, Charles M. Wheatley in 1871, when the fossils obtained from it were determined by Prof. E. D. Cope as of thirty-four species. Attention was again called to the paleontological interest of the locality by President Dixon, of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in 1894. The fissure was examined again by Dr. Dixon and others, and was more thoroughly explored by Mr. Henry C. Mercer. Mr. Mercer published a preliminary account of the work, which was followed by the successive studies of the material by Professor Cope preliminary to a complete and illustrated report to be made after a full investigation of all accessible material. Professor Cope did not live to publish this full report, which was his last work, prepared during the suffering of his final illness. It is now published, just as the author left it, as Vertebrate Remains from the Port Kennedy Deposit, from the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Four plates of illustrations, photographed from the remains, accompany the text.

The machinery of Mr. Fred A. Lucas's story of The Hermit Naturalist reminds us of that of the old classical French romances, like Télémaque, and the somewhat artificial, formal diction is not dissimilar. An accident brings the author into acquaintance and eventual intimacy with an old Sicilian naturalist, who, migrating to this country, has established a home, away from the world's life, on an island in the Delaware River, The two find a congenial subject of conversation in themes of natural history, and the bulk of the book is in effect a running discourse by the old Sicilian on snakes and their habits—a valuable and interesting lesson. The hermit has a romance, involving the loss of his motherless daughter, stolen by brigands and brought to America, his long search for her and resignation of hope, and her ultimate discovery and restoration to him. The book is of easy reading, both as to its natural history and the romance.

We have two papers before us on the question of expansion. One is an address delivered by John Barrett, late United States Minister to Siam, before the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, and previous to the beginning of the attempt to subjugate the islands, on The Philippine Islands and American Interests in the Far East. This address has, we believe, been since followed by others, and in all Mr. Barrett favors the acquisition of the Philippine Islands on the grounds, among others, of commercial interests and the capacity of the Filipinos for development in further civilization and self-government; but his arguments, in the present aspect of the Philippine question, seem to us to bear quite as decidedly in the opposite direction. He gives the following picture of Aguinaldo and the Filipino