Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/649

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POPULAR MISCELLANY.
631

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Applications of Physical Forces. By Amédée Guillemin. Edited by J. N. Lockyer. New York: Macmillan. Pp. 770; with colored Plates and Illustrations. Price, $12.50.

Notes on Life Insurance. By Gustavus W. Smith. New York: Van Nostrand. Pp. 204. Price, $2.

Report of the Commissioner of Education. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 1,189.

National Quarterly Review. New York, 658 Broadway. Pp. 192. $5 a year.

European Surveys. By Major C. B. Comstock, of the Engineers. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 101.

Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (1876). Yokohama: Japan Mail office. Pp. 178.

Celestial Dynamics. By J. W. Hanna. The author, Mount Vernon, Iowa. Pp. 32. Price, 35 cents.

National History of Illinois. Bulletin No. 1. With Plates. Bloomington: Pantograph Printing-House. Pp. 76.

Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes. Major C. B. Comstock in charge. With Plates. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 84.

Catalogue of Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. Pp. 55.

Effects of Alcoholic Poison. By J. H. Kellogg, M.D. Battle Creek, Michigan: Health Reformer print. Pp. 125.

The Mathematician. Royal Cooper, editor. Vol. I., No. 1. Pp. National Republican print. $1.50 a year.

Giant Birds of New Zealand. By J. C. Russell. From American Naturalist. Pp. 11.

Biographical Notice of A. R. Marvine. By J. W. Powell. From the Bulletin of the Washington Philosophical Society. Pp. 8.

American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb. E. A. Fay, editor. Vol. XXII., No. 1. Pp. 64. Washington: Gibson Brothers print.

Climato-therapy of Consumption. By Dr. S. E. Chaillé. From the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. Pp. 12.

Corundum. By C. W. Jenks. Boston: J. Wilson & Son, printers. Pp. 17.

Ueber die Darstellung und Eigenschaften des Trijodresorcius. Von Arthur Michael und Thomas H. Norton. Berlin: F. Dümmler. Pp. 2.

Intimidation and the Number of White and Colored Voters in Louisiana. By S. E. Chaillé, M.D. New Orleans Picayune print. Pp. 36.



POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Antarctic Icebergs.—Sir C. Wyville Thomson, in a lecture reported in Nature for November 30th and December 7th, presents facts of interest obtained during the cruise of the Challenger, concerning the antarctic regions visited.

The expedition met with its first ice five days' sail southward of the desolate, rocky group known as the Heard Islands. In a short time the ship was in the midst of bergs of exquisite beauty of both form and color.

The most southerly point reached was latitude 66° 40' south, longitude 78° 22' east, when they were exactly 1,400 miles from the south pole. The icebergs, some of them of immense size, were tabular in form, "the surface being level, and parallel with the surface of the sea . . . a cliff, on an average 200 feet high, bounding the berg. The cliffs were marked with delicately pale blue lines a foot apart near the top, closer together near the bottom; the intervening bands were white, probably from containing some air. . . . The stratifications of the bergs being originally horizontal, they were believed to be blocks riven from the edge of the great antarctic ice-sheet."

A further conclusion was that the stratification was due to successive accumulations of snow upon a nearly level surface. There was no evidence that the ice had passed over uneven surfaces, nor was there upon the bergs any trace of débris, such as might fall from elevated cliffs. The snow