Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/867

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LITERARY NOTICES.
847

gard to his use of material already published the author says: "Such a work as this can not, of course, be carried out without much compilation; but by far the greater part of the labor has been expended in the original work of discussing the data thus compiled, and in acquiring wholly new data, whether by experimental research or in prolonged examination of the processes described. For instance, there are about two hundred tables in this volume; of these, all but about twenty (and most of these twenty are very small) are either wholly original or consist mainly or wholly, not of matter published by others, but of numbers calculated therefrom." As to revealing trade secrets, his rule has been to give all the information about present practice that seems useful and that he has permission to give, while trying to conceal the identity of the establishment at which it exists. This volume being numbered one, implies another or more to follow it, but no announcement of succeeding volumes is made in the one now issued.

Report upon United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, in charge of Captain George M. Wheeler. Vol. I, Geographical Report. Washington. Pp. 780, quarto, with Plates and Maps.

This report was practically completed in June, 1879, but the officer in charge was prevented, by a press of other duties and by subsequent prolonged illness, from presenting it for publication until 1887. The series of expeditions covered by the report was made under the direction of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, in 1869, and in successive years from 1871 to 1879, inclusive. On the organization of the Geological Survey in 1879, surveys by the War Department for military and industrial purposes were discontinued. The results obtained in these expeditions were published in eight quarto volumes, each devoted to a special topic, as astronomy, geology, etc. The present volume gives a brief account of the expedition of each year, with a summary of results. In 1871 a party explored the Grand Canon of the Colorado River in boats, from Camp Mohave to Diamond Creek. An itinerary of this trip is given, to which is prefixed a sketch of earlier explorations along this river. Some account is given of the population, industries, irrigation, and land classification in the regions explored, which include parts of New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon. In several appendixes are given descriptions of the atlas sheets issued as a part of these reports, an account of the methods of survey employed, notes on the survey and disposal of the public lands of the United States (with map), and considerations on the government land and marine surveys of foreign nations. The last appendix is a memoir on discoveries and explorations on the Pacific Coast of North America and in the interior west of the Mississippi from 1500 to 1880. In the first part of the memoir the explorations between 1500 and 1800 are mentioned, and eleven curious old maps are reproduced which show the very imperfect knowledge of America that existed during much of this period. This is followed by an epitome of the memoir by Lieutenant G. K. Warren, made in 1858, on the explorations west of the Mississippi from 1800 to 1857, and by a sketch of the explorations and surveys from 1857 to 1880. The volume contains three folded maps and thirty-eight plates, the latter including the eleven old maps already mentioned, and representing also typical localities, contours, Indian costumes, etc., in the country examined.

Physiognomy and Expression. By Prof. Paolo Mantegazza. The Contemporary Science Series. New York: Scribner & Welford. Pp. 327. Price, $1.25.

In this treatise the author takes up the study of expression at the point where Darwin left it, "and modestly claims to have gone a step further." There is a great deal of chaff in the literature of the subject; and the author, who is one of its most accomplished students, has accordingly had the task set before him of separating once for all positive observations from the number of bad guesses and ingenious conjectures which have hitherto encumbered the study. His wish, he says, has been "to render to science what is due to science, and to imagination what is due to imagination." Besides new facts, the reader is invited to find in his work facts already known, but inter-