Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/144

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134
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their individual prerogatives combined into a single authority.

The third edition of Prof. Simon Henry Gage's manual of The Microscope and Histology has been entirely rewritten, enlarged, and more fully illustrated; and, while elementary matters have received fuller treatment than in previous editions, special effort has been made in this to give more adequate accounts of certain apparatus which are coming to be used more and more in the higher fields of investigation in pure science and in practical medicine. In order to encourage students to do their own work, exercises illustrating the principles of the microscope and the methods of employing it have been made an integral part of the treatise. To this branch of the subject the volume now before us, constituting Part I of the work The Microscope and Microscopical Methods is largely devoted. (Printed and for sale by Andrus & Church, Ithaca, N. Y. Price $1.)

In the report of Mr. Theodore B. Comstock, On the Geology and Mineral Resources of the Central Mineral Region of Texas for 1890, about a thousand miles are added to the area given in the previous report as that of the pre-carboniferous rocks comprising the regions described, Silurian and Cambrian strata having been discovered in fields that were supposed to be covered by the Cretaceous. In order to give special prominence to economical results, the outline of the stratigraphy introduced is prepared with the primary object of affording a kind of key to those whose practical needs preclude the task of selecting from the mass of technical description the particular details which apply to individual cases. For the benefit of the same class of persons a most useful series of directions are given for finding in the report at once the information concerning the reader's particular locality, by the aid of which he may judge what method of development may be most economical and profitable.

Part II of the fourth volume of The Journal of the College of Science, Imperial University, Japan, contains seven papers, five of which are by Japanese authors, while one is a joint production. They are On some Fossil Plants from the Coal-bearing Series of Nagato, and On some Cretaceous Fossils from Shikoku, by Matajiro Yokoyama; Comparison of Earthquake Measurements made in a Pit and on the Surface Ground, by Prof. S. Sekiya; Laboratory Notes, by Prof. C. G. Knott; Diffraction Phenomena produced by an Aperture on a Curved Surface, and Effect of Magnetization on the Permanent Twist of Nickel Wire, by H. Nagaoka; and On Certain Thermo-electric Effects of Stress in Iron, by Prof. Knott and S. Kimura.

Edward Flügel's study of Thomas Carlyle's Moral and Religious Development is published in a translation by Jessica Gilbert Tyler, by M. L. Holbrook & Co. The main object of the book is defined by the author to be to consider Carlyle as a moral force. Before turning attention, however, to his moral and religious views, a brief consideration is given to the history of his inner life, especially with reference to its moral and religious side. In this sense chapters are given among the others to Carlyle's Belief, his Relation to Christianity, his Position with Reference to Science, and especially to Philosophy, to Poetry, and Art, his Attitude toward History, and his Ethics.

A series of articles upon the trees of Salem, Mass., and its neighborhood, prepared by Mr. John Robinson, in 1890 and 1891, for one of the newspapers of that city, have been published by the Essex Institution in book form under the title of Our Trees. They give a popular account of the trees in the streets and gardens of the city and of the native trees of Essex County, with the location of the trees and historical and botanical notes. They were written wholly with an eye to popular entertainment and instruction, but prepared with considerable care and a regard to scientific accuracy. In them we have accounts of the character of the magnolias, tulip tree, lindens, tamarix, sumachs, horse-chestnuts, maples, locusts, apples, pears, cherries, dogwoods, tupelo, witchhazel, ashes, catalpa, sassafras, elms, boxtree, mulberries, buttonwood, walnuts, hickories, birches, hornbeams, chestnut, beech, oaks, willows, poplars, pines, spruces, fir, hemlock, larches, cedar, gingko, and yew. One hundred and fifteen species grow in the region, of which fifty-six are natives of Essex County.

A collection of papers on the Quaternary Geology of the Hudson River Valley is intended as a preliminary contribution by Mr.