LITERARY NOTICES. 



279 



serve as a valuable adjunct in every student's 

 library. 



In continuation of the arch geological 

 work of the late Prof. Ehen Norton Hors- 

 ford, his daughter, Miss Cornelia Horsford, 

 has published together a paper by her father 

 entitled Leifs House in Vindand and one 

 by her on Graves of the Northmen (Damrell 

 & Uphara, Boston). The former describes 

 excavations made by Prof. Horsford in Cam- 

 bridge on the site of a dwelling which he 

 identified as one built by the Norse discov- 

 erers of America, the latter describes similar 

 excavations made by his daughter on the site 

 of a similar dwelling near by. Among the 

 discoveries on these spots are parts of the 

 foundation walls, fireplaces, charcoal, shells 

 of moUusks, and the teeth and bones of a 

 deer. Miss Horsford has also opened two 

 grave mounds, but has not opened what she 

 thinks may be the grave of Thorbrand the 

 Valiant, preferring to leave this work to an 

 experienced archa3ologist. 



An Iowa Geological Survey, apparently 

 the third one, was organized in 1892, and has 

 issued its First Annual Report. The most 

 extended paper in this volume is a general 

 account of the Geological Formations of 

 Iowa, by Charles R. Keyes, the Assistant 

 State Geologist. There is an account of 

 Cretaceous Deposits of Woodbury and Plym- 

 outh Counties, by the State Geologist, Samuel 

 Calvin, a Catalogue of Minerals, and papers 

 on Limestones and Lava Flows. Ten plates 

 and twenty-six cuts illustrate the text. A 

 bibliography of two hundred and fifty pages 

 included in the volume shows that its field is 

 not an untrodden one. 



Whenever a public library is started one 

 of the first and most important tasks of its 

 managers is to make up a list of books as 

 the foundation of the collection. Most of 

 the labor of this task could be saved in 

 every case if a carefully made list were ob- 

 tainable that need only be slightly changed 

 so as to fit it to the requirements of the 

 library in question. At the Columbian Ex- 

 position the American Library Association 

 exhibited a popular library of five thousand 

 volumes, in which were illustrated the most 

 approved methods of shelving, cataloguing, 

 and issuing books. A catalogue of this col- 

 lection has been issued by the Bureau of 



Education, under the title Catalog of A. L. 

 A. Library, and is designed to serve the pur- 

 pose of a list the need of which is indicated 

 above. The committee in charge of the 

 work does not claim that the A. L. A. Library 

 is an ideal selection, but that it is a good 

 working library, and that no board of trus- 

 tees would make a mistake in duplicating it. 

 The Catalog really contains two catalogues 

 of the books selected one arranged accord- 

 ing to the Decimal system, the other accord- 

 ing to the Expansive system. The books in 

 the classes of fiction and biography are not 

 given in the classed catalogues, but in sepa- 

 rate alphabetical lists. A large proportion 

 of the books exhibited were given by their 

 publishers. The collection was to be, and 

 probably now has been, deposited with the 

 Bureau of Education at Washington, for 

 permanent exhibition. The selection of the 

 A. L. A. Library might be criticised as better 

 adapted to a community of students than to 

 the users of the ordinary popular library. 

 Seventy-five to eighty per cent of the cir- 

 culation of every popular library is fiction, 

 but only a fraction over fifteen per cent of 

 the books in this collection is fiction. Tliis 

 library tries to cover all fields of knowledge 

 fairly well, and what it shows is not so much 

 what the average reader would want as what 

 he ought to want. 



The Report of S. P. Langley, Secretary 

 of the Sniiihsonian Mstitution, for the Year 

 ending June SO, 1893, presents briefly a gen- 

 eral account of the Institution, and in the 

 appendixes summaries of the reports of the 

 officers in charge of the National Museum, 

 the Bureau of Ethnology, the Bureau of In- 

 ternational Exchanges, the Zoological Park, 

 and the Astro-physical Observatory. 



Several numbers of Aeronautics, a 

 monthly journal devoted to the subject in- 

 dicated by its name, have been received 

 since last October, when it was established 

 by M. N. Forney, publisher of the American 

 Engineer and Railroad Journal and various 

 engineering books (47 Cedar Street, New 

 York, $1 a year). It is to contain in twelve 

 numbers the papers presented to the Con- 

 gress of Aerial Navigation held during the 

 World's Fair, besides other articles, notes, 

 comments, news, etc. Among the papers 

 contained in the first four numbers are On 

 the Problem of Aerial Navigation, by the 



