ual activity, have now attained commanding pre-eminence and supreme importance) will in future constitute a distinctive feature of the work." We understand that the intention is to allow about three eighths of the space of each monthly issue to American contributions; of the latter there are two in the number before us, both excellent articles: one, by Hon. Oscar S. Straus, United States Minister to Turkey, upon the "Development of Religious Liberty in America"; the other, by Thomas G. Shearman, Esq., entitled "The Protectionist Revival in Great Britain." These articles have an American copyright. The next number, we are informed, will contain an article by Mrs. Clara Lanza, of this city, upon "Fiction as National Literature," and another by Horace E. Deming, Esq., also of New York, upon "The Machine in American Politics."
Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals. By W. O. Crosby. Boston: J. Allen Crosby. Pp. 74.
The reasons which have led Professor Crosby to publish these tables are that the best tables which have preceded them are overloaded with descriptions of minerals seldom met with, and give determinations based largely on chemical properties, which are not so conveniently ascertainable as the morphologic and physical properties. Professor Crosby's tables, which are an out-growth of his experience as an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aim to determine about two hundred species—all that the student is likely to have occasion to identify—by their more obvious physical and structural features, adding chemical tests to be used when the identification is not otherwise perfectly satisfactory. Only those tests have been selected requiring the minimum of apparatus, reagents, and previous chemical training. The properties of minerals, and the chemical and blow-pipe tests referred to in the tables, are explained in an introduction. In the tables, minerals are divided first into two classes, those with metallic and those with nonmetallic luster, and then by the color in the former class and the streak in the latter, and further by the hardness; they are subdivided into forty-one groups. A concise physical description of each species is given, by which it may be distinguished from the others of the same group, and the last column of the tables is devoted to chemical tests. An index of species is appended.
The Argentine General Catalogue. Mean Positions of Southern Stars determined at the National Observatory, Benjamin A. Gould, Director. Cordoba. 1886.
This volume puts the public in possession of the main results of Dr. Gould's great labors in Cordoba. The catalogue contains 32,448 stars, and there are many hundreds more in appended lists of clusters, the number of observations exceeding 145,000. The work includes nearly all the stars in the southern heavens, down to the 812 magnitude, the exceptions chiefly lying north of 23° of south declination, a region already covered by other catalogues. Of the surpassing accuracy of the work, and the minute care with which every part of it has been executed, it would be impertinent for us to speak. To the layman, the contemplation of such a monument of genius, bending itself to incalculable assiduity, is truly a moral lesson.
A Systematic Hand-Book. of Volumetric Analysis. Adapted to the Requirements of Pure Chemical Research, Pathological Chemistry, Pharmacy, Metallurgy, Manufacturing Chemistry, Photography, etc., and for the Valuation of Substances used in Commerce, Agriculture, and the Arts. By Francis Sutton, F.C.S., F.I.C. Fifth edition. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 491. Price, $4.50.
When discoveries of chemical reactions and methods are being published so voluminously as at present, frequent revisions are necessary to keep a manual of analysis abreast of the times. In preparing this edition of his hand-book, Mr. Sutton has completely revised the work, and has added new methods. He has excluded some of the matter of previous editions as being of little value, among which is the systematic analysis of soils and manures by volumetric methods, also that of indigo, for which no satisfactory process is known. The opening section of the book is devoted to a description of apparatus and instruments. The second section is on analysis by saturation, and comprises alkalimetry and acidimetry, including in each division
