LITERARY NOTICES. 



421 



Young Fish by Unsuitable Fishing Imple- 

 ments," " The Winter Haddock-Fishery of 

 New England," " The Influence on the Coast 

 Fisheries of the Steamers used in the Men- 

 haden Fishery," " Artificial Culture of Me- 

 dicinal Leeches and of Species of Helix," 

 and " Changes in the Fisheries of the Great 

 Lakes during the Decade 1870-1880." 



Electro-Magnets: The Determination of 

 the Elements of their Construction. 

 By Th. Dc Moncel. New York : D. "Van 

 Nostrand. Pp. 122. Price, 50 cents. 



The author's purpose is to give a plain, 

 practical essay on the subject, adapted to 

 the use of amateurs, experimenters, and 

 working artisans, as well as of students. 

 Though the laws on which the formulas are 

 based have not been fully verified, yet re- 

 sults have been obtained so nearly approach- 

 ing verification as to make it safe to ad- 

 mit them as guides in the construction of 

 electro-magnets. 



A Perpetual Calendar. By President F. 

 A. P. Barnard. Price, 40 cents. 



The calendar, though having a rather 

 complicated appearance at first sight, be- 

 comes simple and easy of operation when its 

 theory is once explained. It consists of a 

 sheet of stiff pasteboard, to the top of which 

 is attached a revolving disk bearing the 

 names of the months and the numbers from 

 1 to 99, while the main sheet contains seven 

 parallel columns of the days of the month. 

 The disk should be properly set to the col- 

 umns at the beginning of each year ; then 

 the day of the month can be found on look- 

 ing for it. 



Pocket Logarithms, to Four Places of 

 Decimals. New York : D. Van Nos- 

 trand. Pp. 139. Price, 50 cents. 



Surveyors and other persons engaged in 

 field-work often find themselves in need of 

 tables of logarithms in a form which they 

 can conveniently carry with them. The 

 present volume is for the use of such per- 

 sons. Its four-place tables give as close an 

 accuracy as is likely to be required in field- 

 work. They include the logarithms of num- 

 bers, and logarithmic sines and tangents to 

 single minutes, with a table of natural sines, 

 tangents, and co-tangents. 



First Annual Report of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology to the Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80. By 

 J. W. Powell, Director. Illustrated. 

 Washington: Government Printing-Uf- 

 fice. Pp. 603. 



The act of Congress of March 3, 1879, 

 which established the United States Geologi- 

 cal Survey, made provision for continuing, 

 under the direction of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, the anthropologic work that had 

 been carried on by the earlier surveys. The 

 methods of the new bureau have been, 

 "first, the prosecution of research by the 

 direct employment of scholars and special- 

 ists ; and, second, by inciting and guiding 

 research immediately conducted by collabo- 

 rators at work throughout the country." The 

 latter division of the work has been fur- 

 thered by distributing manuals upon various 

 branches of the study, designed to make 

 the investigations of independent workers 

 systematic and thorough. Being convinced 

 that the social institutions of the Indians 

 can not be understood without a knowledge 

 of the means adapted to express accurately 

 the ideas embodied in those institutions, 

 Major Powell has directed a large share 

 of attention to language, and about two 

 thirds of the present volume is occupied by 

 papers on that subject. The longest of these 

 is one by Lieutenant-Colonel Garrick Mal- 

 lery on " Sign Language among North Amer- 

 ican Indians compared with that among 

 other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes." This is 

 drawn up merely as a report of progress, 

 and consists of a part of the data on this 

 subject that have been obtained by the 

 bureau. A large number of Indian signs 

 are herein graphically described and fully il- 

 lustrated, though perhaps more space is given 

 to describing the signs of other peoples than 

 is absolutely necessary for purposes of com- 

 parison. A paper by the director describes 

 quite a complete system of government that 

 exists among the Wyandots ; and another, 

 also by Major Powell, is an interesting and 

 thoughtful sketch of " Indian Mythology." 

 The contribution of greatest popular inter- 

 est is a second paper by Dr. n. C. Yarrow 

 on mortuary customs, which embodies many 

 communications from recent investigators, 

 together with a large number of extracts 

 from writers who have touched upon this 

 subject within the last two hundred years. 



