Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/295

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
POPULAR MISCELLANY.
281

Sergi, Giuseppe, Editor. Eivista di Pedagogia e Scienze Affini (Review of Pedagogy and Related Sciences). Monthly. Rome: G. B. Paravia. Vol. I, No. 3. Pp. 61.

Shufeldt, R. W. Parasites of Birds. Pp. 41.—Photographing a Live Specimen of Gambrel's Partridge. Pp. 3, with Three Plates.

Smith, Eugene A. Geological Surveys in Alabama. Pp. 131.—The Post-Eocene Formations of the Coastal Plain of Alabama. Pp. 12.

Smithsonian Institution. Annual Report of the Board of Regents to July, 1892. Washington: Government Printing Office. Pp. 811.

Stoddard, Charles Augustus. Beyond the Rockies. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 214. $1.50.

Tariff, The, etc. Acts of 1890 and the Bill, H. R. 4861. Washington: Senate Committee of Finance. Pp. 890.

Tarr, Ralph S. Lake Cayuga a Rock Basin. Rochester, N. Y.: Geological Society of America. Pp. 20.

The Technical World, Washington, D. C. Monthly. Specimen pages. $3 a year.

Todd, Mabel Loomis. Total Eclipses of the Sun. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Pp. 244.

Tufts College Studies. No. 1. Three Papers. Pp. 48.

University of Pennsylvania. Report on the Department of Archæology and Palæontology. Pp. 29.

Ward, Lester F., Washington. Fossil Cycadean Trunks of North America, etc. Pp. 14.

Webb, De Witt, M. D. The Shell Heaps of the East Coast of Florida. United States National Museum. Pp. 4, with Eight Plates.

Williams, C. T. Aërotherapeutics, or the Treatment of Lung Diseases v Climate. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 187. $2.

Winchell, N. H. Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota. Twenty-first Annual Report, 1892. Pp. 171.

Winslow, Arthur. The Coal Measures of Missouri. Pp. 8. The Art and Development of Topographic Mapping. Pp. 8. Geological Surveys in Missouri. Pp. 16. Lead and Zinc Deposits of the Mississippi Valley, etc. Pp. 8.

Wright, Carroll D. Eighth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1893. Washington: Government Printing Office. Pp. 707.


POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Studies of Lakes.—Lakes, says Mr. Albert P. Brigham, belong within the domain of what is sometimes called geographical geology. Their geographical interest is not small. Their variety in size, from the smallest natural ponds up to inland seas, their diversity in shape, depth, and altitude, and their great numbers, are facts which strike the attention and suggest inquiry. Studied geologically, lakes open up an important body of facts. Primeval continents could not have progressed far in their growth before lake-making conditions began to appear. Viewed individually, lakes are affairs of short life. Geological forces are always making lake basins, and such basins are constantly being destroyed by filling with sediment, or by the cutting down of their rims; or, the basin may remain, while the lake is destroyed by desiccation. On most competent authority, the numerous lakes of the Scottish Highlands are but a fraction of what have formerly existed. The variety of forces whose action aids in bringing lakes into being has suggested the most convenient classification of lakes—that is, according to their origin. Thus we have a relatively small group of lakes of volcanic origin, occupying old craters or valleys obstructed by lava. More important is the group of orographic lakes, or those due to deformation of the earth's crust. Here belong the lakes of the Great Basin. In limestone countries, solution lakes are not uncommon, and this agency has been operative in enlarging many basins due primarily to other agencies. Landslip lakes have been noticed by Lyell, and Gilbert records the formation of small lakes behind landslip terraces. River and shore lagoons must be named in any full classification, while glaciation, in one way or another, is responsible for the existence of most lakes. Here we have the ice-dam or temporary type, as Agassiz and Iroquois, the kettle-hole group, which is often made to include what Geikie calls "Lakes of the Plains," and which he defines as lakes that "lie in hollows of the covering of detritus left on the surface of country when the ice-sheets and icebergs retreated." Thus they differ from the kettle-hole ponds, which are thought to have frequently originated by the sliding of débris from stranded bergs or ice masses isolated by retreat of the main sheet. Other glacial lakes are due to morainic dams in valleys, and yet others are in whole or in part rock basins, due to glacial excavation; of these are the lakes of New York.

The Beginnings of Speech.—André Lefévre, in his book on Races and Languages, postulates as the origin of speech that the animal is already in possession of the two significant elements of language: the cry, spontaneous and reflexive, of emotion and need; the cry, already intentional, of warning, menace, and appeal. From these two sorts of cry man, endowed with a richer vocal apparatus and less limited cerebral