Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/290

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278
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the collection of thallophytes, 16,420 specimens, making in all about 222,420 specimens. It also has received considerable collections of wood wedges, thin veneers of woods mounted as transparencies, and the set, so far as issued, of Prof. Nördlinger's sections. The scientific papers published in the report comprise a study of the Venation of Willows, by Dr. N. M. Glatfelter; Material for a Monograph on the Tan Woods, by J. Christian Bay; The Sugar Maples, with a winter synopsis of all North American Maples, by Dr. Trelease; Notes on a List of Plants collected in Southeastern Missouri, by B. F. Bush: and some papers of a more special and technical character by Dr. Trelease and J. C. Whitten.

A posthumous work by M. A. de Quatrefages, entitled Les Émules de Darwin (the Rivals of Darwin), is published by Félix Alcan, Paris, in two volumes. In it the learned author, after examining the work of Darwin and his French predecessors, passes in review the conceptions of those who were his rivals—or perhaps we might better say his co-workers—in bringing the new doctrines to the attention of naturalists, or in trying to perfect the doctrine of the master. These émules are Alfred Russel Wallace, M. Naudin, Mr. Romanes, Carl Vogt, Felippi, Haeckel, Huxley, Owen, Mivart, Gubler and Koelliker, D'Omalius d'Halloy, and Erasmus Darwin, of whose work full reviews and as "impartial as possible" are given. From this examination the author receives but one impression—that of our impotence to resolve the great problem which so many eminent men have attacked in vain. This review is preceded by a preface by M. Edmond Perrier, in which the work of Quatrefages is summarized at length, and by a eulogy or address on his life and labors, delivered by M. E. T. Hamy at the opening of the course in anthropology of the Museum of Natural History, Paris, in May, 1892. These biographical notices occupy about half of the first volume.

The Annual Report of the United States National Museum for the year ending June 30, 1802, gives the number of specimens in the collections as at that time 3,223,941, showing that in ten years from what was practically the date of occupancy of the museum building the collections had increased sixteen fold. The institution is crowded for space, and will soon be compelled, unless it is relieved, to discourage rather than seek additions. It has already lost several large and important collections on this account. Besides the reports of the assistant secretary in charge. Dr. G. Brown Goode, and of the curators of the several departments, the volume contains papers on Japanese Woodcutting and Woodcut Printing, by T. Tokuno; the Relation of Biology to Geological Investigation, by Charles A. White; Scientific Taxidermy for Museums, by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt; The Shofar, by Cyrus Adler; The Crump Burial Cave, by Frank Burns; Minute Stone Implements from India, by Thomas Wilson; and Comparative Oölogy of North American Birds, by Dr. Shufeldt, with a bibliography and list of accessions.

In A Study of Certain Figures in a Maya Codex, Mr. J. Walter Fewkes takes up a peculiar figure in the Codex Cartesianus, which is known as that of the "long-nosed god," and inquires into its meaning. A relationship is traced with the rain god, and certain features in the arrangement of the figures are supposed to represent the four world-quarter symbols.

The students of Leland Stanford Junior University should have a thoroughly intelligent appreciation of the functions of law and development in Nature if they properly digest the course of lectures on Factors in Organic Evolution given by President Jordan with the assistance of some of the other professors. This we can infer from the syllabus, which comes to us as a volume of one hundred and forty-nine pages printed on one side of the paper, and gives the subheads treated in each of the fifty-eight lectures. The scope of the course may be gathered from the following subjects of some of the lectures: The Unrolling of the Universe; Heredity: the Great Conservative Force in Evolution; The Meaning of Sex; Ontogeny and Phylogeny; The Origin of the Eye; Law of Self-activity; Evolution of Plants; The Way out of Pessimism; The Fool-killer and his Mission; The Evolution of the Idea of God; and The Evolution of the Common Man. A list of books recommended for reading is added.

The eleventh volume of the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission for 1891 contains papers on A Reconnaissance of the