Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/432

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dences of the association of cremation and inhumation have been observed; Miss Fletcher's studies of living Indians and their social and religious customs; and Miss Zelia Nuttall's readings of ancient Mexican inscriptions. The present report completes the third volume, including seven years, of the series of reports. The three volumes together furnish a complete history of the institution for twenty years, and represent a great deal of archæological research.

Explorations on the West Coast of Florida and in the Okeechobee Wilderness. By Angelo Heilprin. Published by the Wagner Free Institute of Science; of Philadelphia. Pp. 134, with Nineteen Plates.

The Wagner Free Institute of Science, of whose transactions this memoir constitutes the first volume, was founded by the late William Wagner, who, after having accumulated a museum, library, and collections of apparatus, and sustained public scientific lectures for thirty years, bequeathed his property to a Board of Trustees. The Institute was incorporated in 1885, and organized a faculty of four professors, who are to give free lectures, and teach the method of, and make, research. Provision is also contemplated, when resources shall admit of them, in aid of original research, and the publication of its results. The expedition of which the present work records the results was dispatched under its auspices, with the personal co-operation of Mr. Joseph Wilcox, one of its trustees. At the time of Mr. Heilprin's visit, Florida was, in respect to geographical, zoölogical, and geological features, very nearly the least known portion of the national domain. Not even its broader geological aspects had been determined, and nearly every one believed that it was a structure of coral. Observations were conducted on the west coast as far south as the mouth of the Caloosahatchie, and thence eastward into the wilderness of Lake Okeechobee. The zoölogical researches comprised an examination of the littoral oceanic fauna and the fauna of the Okeechobee lake region, which, in the author's belief, had not hitherto been systematically investigated. Respecting the geological character of Florida, the author concludes that the whole State belongs exclusively to the Tertiary and Post-Tertiary periods, and consequently represents the youngest portion of the United States; that there is not a particle of evidence sustaining the coral theory of the growth of the peninsula, but all the evidence points against it, and indicates that the land has been formed by the usual methods of sedimentation and upheaval; while the coral tract is limited to a border region of the south and southeast, Man's great antiquity on the peninsula is regarded as established beyond a doubt, "and not improbably the fossilized remains found on Sarasota Bay, now wholly converted into limonite, represent the most ancient belongings of man that have ever been discovered."

An Abstract of the Oleomargarine Question. Presented by the Garden City Dairy Company of Chicago. Chicago: Knight & Leonard Company. Pp. 18, legal cap.

The object of this presentation is to point out the existing errors in national legislation on the subject, with the expectation of procuring their correction. The authors admit that legislation to regulate the manufacture of oleomargarine and guard its purity, and taxation commensurate with the taxation of other articles of trade, are proper, but contend that the present acts, being new and on a new subject, need revision; and insist that wrong motives have entered into their construction. There were three motives, they hold, that led to the adoption of the oleomargarine law: to prevent the sale or use of any poisonous or unwholesome article in the guise of butter; to require the new food-product, oleomargarine or butterine (when absolutely wholesome), to be sold honestly under its own proper name, that the consumer might know when he bought oleomargarine that he was not buying butter; and to protect "butter" by taxing oleomargarine and oleomargarine dealers to such an extent that the business of manufacturing this new food-product might be destroyed. Concerning the first motive, they allege that "the facts show plainly that there was no occasion whatever for the enactment of the law"—there was no impure or unwholesome oleomargarine. As to the second motive, "All thinking and