7 12 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



podes, or albatrosses, fulmars, shearwaters, 

 petrels, gannets, cormorants, pelicans, etc. ; 

 similar Studies of the Sub-family Ardeinoe, 

 of which the great blue heron, Ardea hero- 

 dias, is selected as the type ; and, under the 

 heading of Contributions to the Comparative 

 Osteology of Arctic and Sub-arctic Water- 

 Birds, a memoir on " The Auklets." 



The number of The American Journal of 

 Psychology (E. C. Sanford, Worcester, Mass., 

 $5 a year) which completes its second year 

 contains three principal articles. The first 

 of these is by Charles L. Edwards, on the 

 "Folk-lore of the Bahama Negroes," and 

 embodies many stories similar in character 

 to those which have been recently obtained 

 from the negroes of our Southern States. 

 The collection is introduced by several pages 

 of description of the islands and the peo- 

 ple. The second paper is " On some Char- 

 acteristics of Symbolic Logic," by Christine 

 L. Franklin. The fourth and concluding 

 paper of Dr. W. H. Burnham's series on 

 " Memory, historically and experimentally 

 considered," appears in this number. In 

 this paper Dr. Burnham sketches the prog- 

 ress of recent theories. He finds that the 

 view that " the essence of memory is a 

 functional disposition persisting in the brain 

 is, perhaps, the one most widely held by con- 

 temporary psychologists." He also glances 

 at the recent experimental studies upon 

 memory, and appends to his paper a bibliog- 

 raphy of the most important literature of 

 the subject. 



In The Chemistry of Narcotics, a pam- 

 phlet by Prof. E. Haworth (the author, Os- 

 kaloosa, Iowa, 25 cents), a brief account is 

 given of the preparation and chemical char- 

 acter of the common alcoholic beverages, 

 chloral, the bromides, and the vegetable 

 alkaloids. A table of percentages of alco- 

 hol in foreign and domestic alcoholic bever- 

 ages is appended. 



Tlie Cosmic Law of Thermal Repulsion 

 (Wiley, 15 cents) is an attempt to account 

 for the tails of comets. The author's view 

 is, that the projected matter forming the tail 

 has been separated from the body of the com- 

 et by the radiant energy of the sun. He 

 states the details of his hypothesis in the 

 present essay, and quotes from many scien- 

 tific authorities passages which directly or 

 indirectly support it. 



The popular lectures and discussions 

 given before the Brooklyn Ethical Associa- 

 tion last winter have been published in book- 

 form under the title Evolution (James H. 

 West, Boston). The fifteen papers on vari- 

 ous evolutionary topics which the volume 

 comprises were noticed in these pages when 

 published separately. 



A paper on Marine Shells and Fragments 

 of Shells in the Till near Boston, by Prof. 

 Warren Upham, has been published in the 

 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Nat- 

 ural History, Vol. XXIV. The fossils here 

 described have been before regarded as evi- 

 dence that the land in which they are found 

 had been previously submerged beneath the 

 sea. Instead of this, the observations of 

 Prof. Upham go to show that the fossils 

 were brought to their present positions from 

 the bed of the sea on the north, by the ice- 

 sheet. In the same volume is a paper on 

 The Structure of Drumlins, also by Prof. 

 Upham. Another recent paper by him, on 

 Olaciation of Mountains in New England and 

 New York, is published in " Appalachie," 

 Vol. V, No. IV. 



In a bulletin on Natural Gas in Minne- 

 sota, the geologist of that State, Prof. N. H. 

 Winchell, reviews the geological facts and 

 the results of experiments bearing on the 

 question whether gas in any considerable 

 quantity is likely to be found in Minnesota. 

 His conclusions are, that the great forma- 

 tions that furnish gas in the United States 

 are almost wholly wanting in Minnesota ; that 

 the gas which comes from shallow wells at 

 Freeborn is confined'to the drift ; and that if 

 gas is found in Minnesota in a lower forma- 

 tion than it has been found in anywhere else, 

 as has been predicted, it will be something 

 new in geology. 



The publication of a treatise on the Pa- 

 leontology of the Cretaceous Formations of 

 Texas has been undertaken by Prof. Robert. 

 T. Hill, of the University of Texas, at Aus- 

 tin. It is to be published in installments, at 

 twenty- five cents each. Part I, now issued, 

 comprises descriptions of three specimens, 

 with plates. The same author has also pub- 

 lished Part I of a Check-List of the Inverte- 

 brate Fossils from the Cretaceous Formation* 

 of Texas, accompanied by Notes on their Geo- 

 graphic and Geologic Distribution. In " The 



