the Spanish rule in South America. The battles of Prome, in Burmah, and of Staoueli, in Algiers, and the siege of Silistria, on the Danube, are among the less known operations which are included. Four battles of our civil war are ranked as decisive, viz., that between the Monitor and the Merrimac, Gettysburg, the capture of Vicksburg, and Five Forks; two of the Franco-Prussian war, Gravelotte and Sedan; and two recent British disasters in Egypt, El Obeid, and the fall of Khartoum. The author partly disarms criticism as to his selection, by saying that it is unlikely that any unanimity of opinion could be found among historical students of the present day on this subject. Mr. Knox is best known as a writer of juvenile books of travel and biography, and his style in this volume is popular, displaying much of the picturesqueness which fascinates his younger readers. A general statement of his sources of information is given in the preface, but there are no specific references to authorities in the text. The volume has no index.
United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Part XIII. Report of the Commissioner for 1885. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 112 + 1108.
This bulky volume testifies to the industry of the Fish Commission during 1885. The report gives a general survey of the work of the year, and to it are appended thirteen reports of steamers and stations, including one on the thermometers used by the Commission, by Dr. J. H. Kidder, and twelve other papers on special topics. Among the latter is an account, by Captain J. W. Collins, of the fishing-grounds examined during a cruise along the coast of the South Atlantic States and in the Gulf of Mexico. This paper contains much information in regard to the methods and results of the sponge, turtle, and other fisheries of Key West and the fisheries of Western Florida, in which the red snapper, pompano, sheep's-head, Spanish mackerel, mullet, etc., are caught. Under the head of scientific investigation are two papers on the development of the cetaceæ and of osseous fishes, by John A. Ryder; one on the decapod Crustacea of the Albatross dredgings, by Sidney I. Smith; one on the Annelida chœlopoda from Eastport, Maine, by H. E. Webster and James E. Benedict, and another by John Murray and A. Renard, read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the nomenclature, origin, and distribution of deep-sea deposits. There is a catalogue by David S. Johnson, supplementary to the "Synopsis of the Fishes of North America," issued in 1883, and comprising additions and corrections accumulated during 1883 and 1884, and also a list, with descriptions, of patents of 1882-'84 relating to fish and fisheries, illustrated with one hundred and fifty plates. Many of the other papers are copiously illustrated.
Second Annual Report of the School of Expression, Boston: S. S. Curry, Dean. Pp. 3.
The School of Expression has grown out of the work of the School of Oratory which was opened at Boston University some fourteen years ago. Its aim is not merely to educate one phase of the delivery, but to include training for the complete control of the body and the whole mechanism used in speech, and also to give practical discipline of the imaginative, sympathetic, logical, and dramatic instincts. The first endeavor is to secure correct intellectual, emotional, and volitional action in all kinds of reading and speaking. The mechanism used in speech is developed, and ease, agility, and precision of action without waste of the vital force are sought through careful and thorough vocal training; while other exercises look to the development of poise, ease, precision, and harmony, flexibility, and strength in the whole organism. The theory of the school is, in short, "to secure control of every agent and develop its distinct function in expression."
Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Vol. III., July 1, 1884, to February 6, 1886. Pp. 180.
Besides the journals of the several meetings of the society, this volume contains the annual presidential addresses of Dr. C. A. White (1883) on "The Application of Biology to Geological History," and of G. Brown Goode (1886) on "The Beginnings of Natural History in America." Dr. White elucidates, in opposition to the European theory of the synchronous character of similar de-
