largely taken up with the geology of the iron-bearing rocks of northern Minnesota, and several brief papers. The volume is illustrated with geological maps and many structural figures.
Dr. M. E. Wadsworth was in charge of a surveying party during a part of the summer of 1886, but devoted the rest of the season to laboratory work, the result of which is published as Bulletin No. 2 of the Minnesota survey, entitled Preliminary Description of the Peridotyles, Gabbros, Diabases, and Andesytes of Minnesota. The paper comprises general descriptions of the Minnesota rocks belonging to these groups, with a great many special descriptions of specimens collected in the northern part of the State.
Bulletin No. 4 of the survey is a Synopsis of the Aphididæ of Minnesota, prepared by O. W. Oestlund, A general description of the Aphididæ and a bibliography of the family are prefixed to the synopsis, and a list of North American plants with the names of species known to attack them is appended. The species of plant-lice treated in this paper were mostly collected along the Mississippi River; but the author has also added notes from other localities, so that he considers the report as applying to the whole State, except the pine district in the northern part.
A quarterly journal called The Climatologist began life with the number for January (P. O. Box 274, Washington; 50 cents a year). Its chief object will be to present information as to the climatic conditions of various regions and resorts with especial regard to their influence on the preservation of health and the cure of disease. Various sanitary subjects will also come within its scope.
The instructors, pupils, and friends of Adam Todd Bruce, Ph. D., have issued a quarto memorial volume containing his thesis entitled Observations on the Embryology of Insects and Arachnids, written for his examination for the degree of Ph. D. Prefixed to the thesis is a sketch of the scientific work of Dr. Bruce by Prof. W. K. Brooks. This young biologist graduated from the University of New Jersey in 1881. He obtained the degree of Ph. D. at the Johns Hopkins University in June, 1886, and was appointed an instructor there in September following. He died in March, 1887. The volume contains six plates illustrating the thesis and a portrait of the author.
Inebriety: its Etiology, Pathology, Treatment, and Jurisprudence, by Norman Kerr, a physician, whose titles and offices indicate that he is an expert in the study of the subject (Philadelphia, P. Blakiston, Son & Co.), has been prepared in response to numerous inquiries which have been addressed to the author regarding the best course to be adopted in dealing with the inebriate. The one common feature of most of these inquiries "has been the non-recognition of a disease element in inebriety, and the acknowledgment of only a moral depravity." Dr. Kerr takes an opposite view, and holds, with Dr. Crothers, of Hartford, that inebriety is a disease, in the face of which the victim is helpless, and that it can be cured only by suitable medical treatment and regimen. In elaboration of this view, he has prepared the present full, methodical treatise on the subject in all its aspects, illustrated with copious citations from his own and other professional experience and observation. The disease inebriety having been described as allied to insanity, five chapters are given to the consideration of its various forms; four to its etiology, with special studies of its predisposing and its exciting causes; two to its pathology; five to its treatment, which, as the disease is a complex one, is necessarily intricate, and is most successful in special homes where the surroundings can all be made favorable; and five to its medico-legal aspects. Under the last heading it is very evident that the legal treatment upon the theory that inebriety is a disease must be quite different from the present system, which regards it as a vice.
The Journal of Physiology (Cambridge Scientific Instrument Co., England) presents in No. 1 of Vol. IX three papers, with notes of proceedings. The first paper, by C. A. MacMunn, is "On the Chromatology of some British Sponges," and consists of examinations of the coloring matters in twelve species of sponge from Tenby. In ten of them ho found chlorophyll, differing in no respect worth mentioning from vegetable chlorophyll; he also found lipochromes in nearly all, and a histohæmatin in seven. As to what use chlorophyll is to sponges. Dr. MacMunn suggests that it may sift out light--
