856 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Taft, L. R., Lansing, Michigan. Greenhouse 

 Construction and Heating. Pp. 27. 



Thruston, G. P. The Antiquities of Tennessee. 

 Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 369. $4. 



Tratman, E. E. Russell. C. E. Report on the 

 Substitution of Wood for Metal in Railroad Ties. 

 "Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 

 363. 



United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. 

 Monthly Chart Corrections. Pp. 6. 



"Waring, George E., Jr. The Sewerage of Co- 

 lumbus, Ohio. Pp. 24. 



Woody, S. E. The Essentials of Medical Chem- 

 istry. Philadelphia : P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 



157. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



California and its Mines. — The trustees 



of the California State Mining Bureau find 

 in the increasing demands for their report 

 evidence that the institution is fulfilling 

 a public want and is growing in public 

 favor. The edition of the sixth annual re- 

 port is exhausted, and that of the seventh 

 nearly so, while the edition of the eighth was 

 nearly doubled. A historical fact of much 

 significance is embodied in the statement 

 that while in the early days the newspapers 

 of the State teemed with notices of min- 

 ing interests which were summarized at 

 regular intervals in quarterly and annual re- 

 views, the articles of that kind have been 

 gradually curtailed as the relative import- 

 ance of the mines diminished and other in- 

 terests pushed themselves into prominence, 

 till now they appear, if at all, as mere items. 

 Hence the Mining Bureau has become the 

 only center and the best source of informa- 

 tion on the subject. A complete review of 

 the mines and mining operations was given 

 for the first time in the report for 1888. 

 Tbe report for 1889 assumes that the whole 

 country owes very much of its prosperity to 

 mining. Every State owes that industry 

 something ; the mid-continental regions al- 

 most their very existence. Mining invest- 

 ments are among the most profitable, not- 

 withstanding an impression to the contrary 

 prevails. The impression that the gold-mines 

 of California are depleted below the point of 

 profitable production is likewise mistaken. 

 The gold taken out has exhausted but little 

 of the auriferous wealth of the State, and the 

 annual production has not heretofore much 

 exceeded what it may be reasonably hoped to 

 reach and maintain in the future. Besides 

 its gold-fields and silver-bearing lodes, Cali- 



fornia possesses the more common metals 

 and minerals in great variety. There is 

 hardly a county in the State but has valu- 

 able mineral deposits of one kind or another, 

 and the distribution of these products is 

 pronounced remarkable. Fourteen of the 

 fifty-three counties make a notable produc- 

 tion of gold, and twelve of gold and silver ; 

 five produce quicksilver, two borax, two salt, 

 four asphaltum, two petroleum, three cop- 

 per, etc. "Were California even poor in the 

 precious metals, it would yet become a great 

 mining State. It is asserted in the report 

 that gold-mining has not yet reached even 

 the stage of sturdy infancy. 



Caprices of Soils. — The system of study- 

 ing the adaptation of soils to crops has 

 grown out of the failure of attempts to set- 

 tle such questions in the laboratory. This 

 work, as is shown in a Bulletin of the Ohio 

 Experiment Station, is attended with great 

 difficulties. "So great is the variation in 

 natural fertility in soils that appear to the 

 eye to be identical in composition, that the 

 results of field experimentation are liable to 

 be even more misleading than those of the la- 

 boratory. Take any single acre of ground for 

 illustration. An open glade in the original 

 forest may have permitted the wind to sweep 

 away its winter coverlet of leaves, and they 

 may have lodged in a thicket of underbrush 

 adjoining, carrying stores of potash and 

 phosphoric acid with them. Such a glade 

 may have been for centuries the pasturing 

 ground of deer. It would then accumulate 

 nitrogen, but would lose potash and phos- 

 phoric acid through an additional channel, 

 while the thicket would accumulate these in 

 excess of nitrogen. The growth of a surface- 

 rooting tree in one spot may have drawn 

 upon the adjacent surface-soil for supplies 

 of potash ; that of a tree with a deep tap 

 root in another may have drawn its sup- 

 port largely from deeper layers of the soil, 

 and also have opened a way for drainage. 

 A slight depression of the soil here may 

 have received added fertility in the waste 

 from a slight elevation there, and he who 

 has studied the soil carefully, especially 

 where its levels are shown by the melting of 

 snow when the ground is frozen, will have 

 detected irregularities of level unsuspected 

 by the casual observer." 



