Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/527

Rh Inclination of the Earth's Axis." The author considers the following questions: How could a belt of nebulous matter acted on by the laws of motion and gravitation become a spheroid? How did the axis of the spheroid, normally perpendicular, become inclined? What was the amount of this inclination up to the moment of the earth's existence separate from the moon? When did the increase to the present obliquity occur? Finally, what was the cause of that increase?

first appearance of man upon the earth took place, according to this author, in the Pliocene, or perhaps earlier.. Before the Adam of the book of Genesis there were several creations of man, and of these creations ten races besides that of Adam survive to this day. Thus, instead of being the first, the scriptural Adam was the last created man. After the "six days" of creation the seventh day commenced, and of that day nearly 6,000 years have run. Judging from analogy, many thousands of years have yet to elapse before the "seventh day" is ended.

paper, reprinted from the American Journal of Science and Art, goes over the same ground as the article by the same author, "The Horseshoe Nebula in Sagittarius," in Vol. VIII. of this In the latter paper Prof. Holden addresses a popular audience, and he accordingly eschews mathematics; but in the former he addresses astronomers, and of course writes in technical language.

school question is here presented from two opposite points of view: that of "an American Catholic citizen," by of Rochester, N. Y.; and that of "a liberal American citizen," by Francis E. Abbott, editor of the Index.

reports have been printed by the authors for private circulation. They are all extracted from vol. iii. of Wheeler's United States Engineer Reports of Explorations and Surveys west of the One Hundredth Meridian. The authors, in this private edition of their reports, correct various typographical errors, and restore some passages which, though occurring in the original manuscripts, do not appear in the documents as officially published. In some instances statements made in the reports are corrected in accordance with the results of more recent investigation.

this elegant quarto volume the Peabody Academy presents to the public the late Prof. Jeffries Wyman's memoir upon the fresh-water shell-mounds of the St. John's River, Florida. Prof. Wyman made his first examination of these shell-mounds in 1860, when collections were made at Lake Harney, Black Hammock, and Enterprise. In 1867 he revisited these places, and soon afterward published a short account of them, of which the present memoir is in some respects a reprint. But later he had opportunities for further exploration, the results of which are here given. The collections made by Prof. Wyman are preserved in the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology at Harvard College.

first of these two numbers of the Bulletin of Hayden's Survey is specially interesting. It contains seven papers, nearly all of them illustrated, on archaeological subjects connected with Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and other Western Territories. In number two are two essays, viz., "Studies of the American Falconidæ," and "Ornithology of Guadeloupe Island." Both of these papers are by Mr. Robert Ridgeway.