Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/438

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422
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

substitution to simplify integration it is sought to economize the time and effort of the student.

The Birds of Indiana, by Amos W. Butler, lately published as part of Willis S. Blatchley's Twenty-second Annual Report on the Geology and Natural Resources of Indiana, is just at hand. It is one of the most accurate, detailed, and satisfactory local catalogues yet published. Three hundred and twenty-one species of birds have been taken in Indiana, and of each of these is given a detailed description, with a general account of its habits, song, migration, and nesting. In the case of the more rare species, full records of the dates and places of capture of the known specimens are appended. Analytical keys to genera and species are also given, so that every facility is furnished for the identification of species. This book is a model of its kind, and is a worthy fruit of Mr. Butler's twenty years of devoted study of the birds of his native State.

Robert H. Whitten, in his monograph on Public Administration in Massachusetts—the relation of central to local activity—pursues a parallel course with that taken by Mr. John A. Fairlie in a similar essay on the Centralization of Administration in New York State> of this same series of Columbia University studies in History, Economics, and Public Law. Having found the systems and tendencies of administration in the early settlement of Massachusetts all for expansion and decentralization, Mr. Whitten now perceives the course altogether changed, and centralization more and more the rule. The change corresponds with changes in the conditions of life, and keeps track with them step by step. Of great dynamic forces which have been set to work and are bringing about a complete reconstruction of the social structure, improvements in transportation and communication were the most vital—first, turnpikes, then the steamboat, railroad, and telegraph; then the horse railway, cheap postage, the telephone, the electric railway) and the bicycle. The tendency at first was to bring about a concentration which was attended by the congestion of population in cities and the depopulation of the rural towns. "The electric railway, the telephone, and the bicycle came in to counteract these evils; while their tendency is strongly toward the centralization of bureaus, it is also toward the diffusion of habitations. These great socializing forces, going hand in hand with the development of the factory system and improvement of machinery, make possible a vastly higher organization of society than was possible under a stagecoach régime."

The first volume of the Final Report of the State Geologist of New Jersey, on Topography, Magnetism, and Climate, was published in 1888. Other volumes embracing other topics have been published since, and in the meantime the supply of the first volume has been exhausted, while the demand has continued. It has been therefore necessary either to reprint the volume or to publish a new work which should include the important statistical matter of it. Accordingly, we have now The Physical Geography of New Jersey, prepared by Prof. Rollin D. Salisbury, with an appendix embodying "Data pertaining to the Physical Geology of the State," by Mr. C. C. Vermeule, who was formerly in charge of the topographic survey, and is author of the volume on water supply. The two parts of the volume treat of the topography of New Jersey as it now is, and the geological history of the topography. The report is accompanied by a relief map of the State, prepared by Mr. Vermeule on the basis of the topographical survey, and presenting, therefore, an accurate picture of the relief. It shows the great features of the State, its ranges of mountains, hills, tablelands, plains, marsh lands, streams, and water areas in their proper relations to one another; and it is contemplated to put it in every schoolhouse in the State as an aid in the study of geography.

M. Imbert de Saint-Amand's series of books about the Second French Empire furnish very interesting reading, are, so far as our recollection of events goes, historically accurate, and fill a gap which the literary world always has to suffer concerning any period too recently passed for a competent judicial mind to have appeared to tell its story. The second of the series—Napoleon III and his Court—takes Louis Napoleon at the height of his success and happiness, just after he had married the beautiful Eugenie, of w horn the world has nothing harsh to say,