SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



>33 



the death of the director of the expedition, 

 Dr. J. E. Humphrey, he took the burden 

 upon himself, and labored faithfully till he 

 contracted yellow fever ; returned to Boston, 

 and died there September 13, 1897. His as- 

 sociates of Johns Hopkins University have 

 published as a memorial volume of him his 

 dissertation on The Cubomedusce, which he 

 presented at the examination for the degree 

 of Doctor of Philosophy in June, 189*7, ac- 

 companied by a brief notice of his life and a 

 portrait. 



Frederick H. Ripley and Thomas Tapper'' 

 authors of the Natural Music Course, have 

 arranged A Short Course in Music, consist- 

 ing of two books, for use in schools in which 

 the more complete course is deemed un- 

 necessary or impracticable. In both books 

 familiar songs are made the basis of ele- 

 mentary music instruction. In these songs 

 the compositions of the best song writers are 

 represented. Exercises in two and three parts 

 in simple form are included in the course. A 

 brief summary of elementary theory is in- 

 serted in the appendix. Few definitions are 

 given, the thought of the learner being so 

 directed as to render them either unneces- 

 sary or obvious. In the cultivation of tone 

 and expression the authors insist that it is 

 the mind rather than the vocal organs that 

 at first needs attention. " If the pupil hears 

 the ideal tone he will almost instinctively im- 

 itate it." A number of portraits of com- 

 posers are given in connection with the 

 songs. (American Book Company. Price, 35 

 cents.) 



Mr. Alfred Still, believing that there was 

 still room for a small book in which the 

 principles determining the behavior of sin- 

 gle-phase alternating currents under various 

 conditions should be considered less from 

 the point of view of the man of science than 

 from that of the engineer, offers Alternating 

 Currents of Electricity and the Theory of 

 Transformers for the place. The book has 

 been written, not only for engineering stu- 

 dents, but also for those engineers who, 

 while having extensive practical knowledge 

 of the subject, are yet anxious to get a cor- 

 rect elementary idea of the leading princi- 

 ples involved. Graphical methods are used 

 throughout, and the introduction of mathe- 

 matics has been carefully avoided. (Pub- 



lished by Whittaker & Co., London ; The 

 Macmillan Company, New York. Price, 

 $1.50.) 



A paper by A. B. Stickney, president of 

 the Chicago Great Western Railway Com- 

 pany, on The Currency Problems of the 

 United States in 1897-98, takes the ground 

 that currency is the creature of commerce ; 

 that legislation has nothing to do with it; 

 that its problems are purely economical ; and 

 that the only thing that can be done for it is 

 to improve the machinery of exchanges. 



A valuable and useful publication is New 

 York State Library Bulletin, Legislation, No. 

 9, containing a summary of legislation by 

 States in 1897. This is the eighth annual 

 number of the series, and its purpose is to 

 show at a glance what laws have been passed 

 by States on any subject, except those of 

 purely local interest. The summaries, though 

 concise, so well cover the principal points of 

 the laws cited that consultation of the text 

 of the laws may often be dispensed with. 

 Constitutional amendments receive special 

 treatment. The references in the present 

 bulletin cover thirty-six States and three 

 Territories. 



Two memoirs, published under one cover 

 by the Peabody Institute of American Archae- 

 ology and Ethnology, relate to explorations 

 by George Byron Cordon in two districts of 

 Honduras, affording relics different in char- 

 acter. The work at the ruins of Copan hav- 

 ing been suspended during 1896 and 1897 by 

 some act of the Government of Honduras, 

 Mr. Gordon had to turn his attention else- 

 where, to explorations the results of which 

 are given under the titles of Researches in 

 the Uloa Vadey and Caverns of Copan, 

 Honduras. The investigations in the Uloa 

 Valley afforded a rich fund of objects of 

 interest and of novel character — pottery 

 adorned with elaborate and remarkably ar- 

 tistic designs, stone images, whistles, terra- 

 cotta stamps, and only one idol. Human 

 remains, of the most meager description, in 

 connection with the pottery furnish reason- 

 able evidence of burial places, but, being 

 only crumbling fragments of bone, are too 

 minute to supply any information respecting 

 the form of burials or the relative position of 

 the objects associated with them. The con- 

 clusions are drawn that the valley was at one 



