Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/588

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566
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

David Starr Jordan. The publication is made "as a memorial of a project undertaken early in the history of American science, by two of the most eminent naturalists this country has ever possessed."

A full and valuable paper on The Cave Fauna of North America is published by Prof. A. S. Packard, from the memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. It contains descriptions of the caves, with notes on their hydrography, temperature, origin, and geological age; the source of the food supply of their inhabitants; the probable mode of colonization; with lists of the species inhabiting the better-known caves. This general introduction to the subject is followed by more special articles on the vegetable life of the caves; a systematic description of the invertebrate animals found in them; a systematic list of the cave animals of North America; geographical distribution of the cave species; lists of American and European cave animals and of blind non-cavernicolous animals; anatomical studies; a discussion of the origin of the cave species and genera; and a bibliography. To all these are appended twenty-seven plates of illustrations.

The seventh series of the "Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science" is devoted to social science, education, and government. The first number is a sketch, by F. C. Montague, of Arnold Toynbee, a tutor at Oxford, and an earnest and practical advocate of political, economical, and ecclesiastical reform, and of measures for improving the condition of the masses, who died in 1883, in his thirty-first year. Accounts are added of "The Work of Toynbee Hall," which is named after him, and in which the effort is made to further what he had at heart, and of "The Neighborhood Guild in New York"—the former by P. L. Gill, and the latter by the Rev. Charles B. Stover. The second and third numbers present the history of The Establishment of Municipal Government in San Francisco, by Prof. Bernard Moses, of the University of California. The history begins with the foundation of the Spanish pueblo in 1776, and is considered in three "somewhat clearly defined periods": those of Spanish settlement and stagnation; of transition, extending from the conquest to the adoption of the charter of 1850; and the third period, ending with the adoption of the charter of 1851. No. 4 is The Municipal History of New Orleans, by William W. Howe. It begins with the foundation of the town in 1718, and traces the gradual development of the municipal organization and its vicissitudes under the changes of jurisdiction which the Louisiana Territory suffered, with the experiments in charter-making that marked the career of the American city, down to the adoption of the present charter in 1882. To this are added notices of the fire department, Commission of Public Works, and water and gas supply, and accounts of the charitable gifts that have been made to the city, and the voluntary public associations. The sixth and seventh numbers embrace a sketch of English Culture in Virginia, by Prof. William P. Trent, of the University of the South. The paper consists chiefly of a study of the letters of Francis Walker Gilmer, one of the most active of the Virginia gentlemen of the old school for the advancement of education, who was also considerably distinguished in his day for literary achievements—and an account of the English professors obtained by Jefferson for the University of Virginia.

No. XXV of the Economic Tracts of the Society for Political Education (330 Pearl Street, New York) is a pamphlet on Electoral Reform. In it the purposes of those persons who are seeking to withdraw the control of the distribution of ballots from partisan manipulators and lodge it with public officers, and to secure a really secret and independent vote, are explained; the objections to their proposed system are answered; the operation of the Australian system is described; and the text of the Massachusetts ballot-reform act and the New York Saxton bill are given in full. No. XXVI of this series is The Liquor Question in Politics, by George Iles. It deals with the growing and alarming power of the liquor traffic, and with the efforts of various forms to restrain it, gives clear and impartial analyses of the propositions and arguments of the advocates of "regulation" by high license, and of the prohibitionists; and contains summaries according prominence to peculiar features of the more recent antiliquor legislation in several States. Mr. O.