Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/139

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LITERARY NOTICES.
129

into mutually helpful and stimulating relations with one another." This is necessary, he says, because as specialization advances the mutual dependence of specialists increases, and isolation in work becomes more and more unendurable. The first lecture is by Prof. Whitman, on Specialization and Organization, in the course of which he states that a national marine biological station with a strong endowment is the great desideratum of American biology The second lecture, on The Naturalist's Occupation, is also by Prof. Whitman, and the others are Some Problems of Annelid Morphology, by E. B. Wilson; The Gastrsea Theory and its Successors, by J. P. McMurrich; Weismann and Maupas on the Origin of Death, by Edwin G. Gardiner; Evolution and Heredity, by Henry F. Osborn; The Relationships of the Sea-Spiders, by T. H. Morgan; On Caryokinesis, by S. Watase; The Ear of Man: its Past, Present, and Future, by Howard Ayres; The Study of Ocean Temperatures and Currents, by William Libber, Jr. The lectures are rather popular in character, and some of them are illustrated with diagrams.

Second Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States to the Interstate Commerce Commission, for the Year ending June 30, 1889. By Henry C. Adams. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 566.

The railway mileage of the United States at the date of making the report was 157,758·83 miles, of which 149,948·66 miles were covered by reports to the commission. The largest mileage is in Illinois, 9,829·48 miles, and the smallest in the District of Columbia, 30·57 miles, but the District has the most railroad to the square mile and Nevada the least. The gauges of tracks are being rapidly accommodated to two standards. The standard gauge, from four feet eight and a half inches to four feet nine inches, inclusive, is used by 1,371 roads, representing 93·3 per cent of the total mileage, and the three-foot narrow gauge by 234 companies, representing six per cent of the total mileage. This shows ninety-nine per cent of the whole as conformed to these two gauges. Of the 25,665 passenger-cars in use, 23,348 are fitted with automatic couplers and 23,546 with automatic brakes; but the freight-cars are not so well provided, so that out of a total equipment of 1,097,591 engines and cars only 80,510 are fitted with automatic couplers and 128,159 with automatic brakes. As compared with foreign railway administration, the number of men employed per mile of line is remarkably small. The record of accidents to men employed "shows in a startling manner the dangerous nature of railway employment"; and a comparison in the matter with England "is greatly to the discredit of the United States." Information is given respecting the organization of property for operation, on the relations of the roads in a system to one another, the capitalization of railway property, earnings and expenses, and the merits and defects of railway statistics. Complications introduced by construction accounts, express companies, outside freight lines and car companies, and private and corporative ownership of rolling-stock make it difficult to obtain complete statistics; but, as far as the work of the railway companies proper is concerned, a fairly satisfactory exhibit is made. The tables in the appendixes give, of detailed information for the year: Classification of railways and mileage, amount of railway capital, earnings and income, general expenditures, payments on railway capital, and summary of financial operations of operating roads.

Grammar and Language. By E. de L. Starck. Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth. Pp. 185. Price, $2.50.

This book is defined in the sub-title as An Attempt at the Introduction of Logic into Grammar. The attempt is intended to be applied no further than to the seven languages with which the author is acquainted, among which the three groups of the IndoEuropean family the Teutonic, the Slavic, and the Romance—are represented. The author believes that he discovers a general principle underlying linguistic phenomena. Grammar has, he affirms, been studied too much from the pedagogical side of the question, while the scientific side has been left out. It has been a drawback in the study of foreign languages that each one is presented to the student disconnected from his mother tongue or any other. On the other hand, the principles of general grammar, in crown-