Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/440

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
424
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by Livingston Stone; and Deep-Sea Exploration, with a general description of the steamer Albatross, her appliances and methods, by Z. L. Tanner.

The Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1893-'94 (J. W. Powell, Director) presents the results of a full year of study by the members of the Bureau, the publication of which in book form has been so delayed that they are hardly longer new to the public, and several authors whose works are referred to in the administrative report—Mallery, Pilling, Dorsey, among them—have died. The administrative report gives a clear account of the classification of the work of the bureau, and of the labor of its agents in various fields, showing that a large amount of information is being accumulated, while the original and living sources are still accessible, which might, if the studies were long delayed, be irrecoverably lost, and which is destined to be of incalculable value to students of mankind. The special papers, published in full with ample illustration, are Stone Implements of the Potomac-Chesapeake Tidewater Province, by W. H. Holmes; The Siouan Indians, a Preliminary Sketch, by W J McGee; Siouan Sociology, a Posthumous paper, by J. O. Dorsey; Tusayan Katcinas, by J. W. Fewkes; and The Repair of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, by Cosmos Mindeleff.

Part second of Volume XXVI of the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, comprising Miscellaneous Investigations of the Henry Draper Memorial, gives first a Review of Progress during the Years 1891 to 1894, followed by accounts of Observations on the Distribution of Stars in Clusters, Measurement of Positions and of Brightness and Spectra of Stars in Clusters. These articles are illustrated by eleven excellent photographic plates, recording and communicating to the eye what was seen.

The Seventeenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, covering the work of the fiscal year 1895-'96, is published in two parts, constituting two very large volumes of 1076 and 864 pages. The first part, besides the director's report, in which the work of the various branches of the survey is described, contains papers on Magnetic Declination in the United States, by Henry Gannett; A Geological Reconnoissance of Northwestern Oregon, by J. S. Ditler; The Geology of the Sierra Nevada, by R. W. Turner; The Coal and Lignite of Alaska, by W. H. Dall; Glacial Brick Clays of Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, by N. S. Shaler and others; and the Eocene and Upper Cretaceous of the Pacific Coast, by T. W. Stanton. The second part contains papers on the Gold Quartz Veins of Nevada City and Grass Valley, by Waldemar Lindgren; Geology of Silver City and the Rosita Hills, by W. Cross; the New and Kanawha Rivers, by M. D. Campbell and W. C. Mendenhall; The Underground Water of the Arkansas Valley, by G. K. Gilbert; The Water Resources of Illinois, by Prank Leverett; and Artesian Waters of a Portion of the Dakotas, by N. H. Denton.

Extension Bulletin No. 20 of the University of the City of New York is also Public Libraries Bulletin No. 6, and embodies the report of the Public Libraries Division for 1896, including statistics of New York libraries.

The Bulletin of the Department of Labor for September, 1897, contains articles on the inspection of factories and workshops in the United States; the mutual rights and duties of parents and children; the municipal or co-operative restaurant of Grenoble, France; digests of recent reports of five State Bureaus of Labor Statistics and of recent foreign statistical publications; decisions of courts affecting labor; and recent State laws relating to labor.

The Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau for the year ending June 30, 1896, besides the usual meteorological tables and related matter for the year, briefly treats of new work undertaken with a view of improving the bureau service, special improvements made during the year, and the preparation and distribution of forecasts and warnings. Noticeable features are the paragraphs about observations with kites and international cloud observations, and the paper, illustrated with charts, on tornadoes since 1889.

To their Library of Useful Stories D. Appleton and Company add The Story of the Earth's Atmosphere (price, 40 cents), in which the author, Douglas Archibald, of the Royal