MISCELLANY 



247 



By E. T. Cox. Pp. COO. Indianapolis 

 Sentinel print. 



Public Libraries in the United States. 

 Part I., pp. 1222; Part II., pp. 89. Wash- 

 ington : Government Printing-Office. 



Essays in Literary Criticism. By R. H. 

 Hutton. Pp. 344. Philadelphia: J. H. 

 Coates. Price, $1.50. 



Vaccination as a Preventive of Small- 

 pox. By W. C. Chapman, M. D. Pp. 91. 

 Toledo, Ohio : Brown & Faunce. 



German and American Brewers' Journal. 

 Semi-monthly. $5.00 per year. Brewers' 

 Publishing Company, 20 Park Place, New 

 York. 



On Cephalization. By James D. Dana. 

 Part V., pp. Y. From American Journal of 

 Science and Arts. 



Report of the Condition of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. By 

 W. S. W. Russhenberger. Pp. 56. Phila- 

 delphia : Collins print. 



Essential Piety of Modern Science : a 

 Sermon. By J. W. Chadwick. Pp. 31. 

 New York : Somerby. 



Surface Drainage of the Metropolitan 

 (Boston) District. By C. W. Folsom, C. E. 

 Pp. 4. From Report of Massachusetts 

 Board of Health. 



A List of Orthoptera. By Dr. Cyrus 

 Thomas. Pp. 20. From Proc. D. A. N. S., 

 vol. i. 



American Library Journal. Monthly. 

 Pp. 2Y. $5.00 per year. New York : Ley- 

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MISCELLANY. 



Distribution of Plain, Prairie, and For- 

 est. In the American Naturalist for Octo- 

 ber, Prof. J. D. Whitney gives a very elab- 

 orate critique of the various hypotheses 

 which have been put forth to account for 

 the distribution of plain, prairie, and forest, 

 over the North American Continent. The 

 author has no theory of his own to offer, 

 but he appears to show conclusively that 

 none of the accepted theories can be re- 

 garded as satisfactory. One of the theories 

 examined by Prof. Whitney is that which 



attributes the existence of forest, prairie, or 

 plain, to the distribution of rainfall through- 

 out the year, or from season to season. As 

 stated by the late J. W. Foster, this theory 

 holds that " wherever the moisture is equa- 

 ble and abundant, we have the densely- 

 clothed forest ; wherever it is unequally dis- 

 tributed, we have the grassy plain (prairie) ; 

 and where it is mostly withheld, we have 

 the inhospitable desert." This last propo- 

 sition Prof. Whitney admits, the other two 

 he pronounces erroneous. He cites the 

 vicinity of Chicago, where Mr. Foster lived, 

 in proof of the incorrectness of that author's 

 views. " Here," says Prof. Whitney, " we 

 have the finest prairie-regions in the world, 

 absolutely destitute of trees, and yet in the 

 full enjoyment of an abundant precipitation, 

 and in the immediate vicinity of an immense 

 sheet of water. For Chicago itself, indeed, 

 the statistics of rainfall are very defective, 

 but, such as they are, they are entirely un- 

 favorable to Mr. Foster's hypothesis. Points 

 in the immediate vicinity of that city, where 

 observations have been taken for a series 

 of years, show an average rainfall of thirty- 

 six to fifty inches, pretty uniformly distrib- 

 uted through the year. An excellent in- 

 stance, on the other hand, of a dense growth 

 of trees combined with the most unequally- 

 distributed rainfall which is possible, is 

 furnished by the western slope of the Sierra 

 Nevada, in California, whose magnificent 

 forests are well known, as also is the fact 

 that there is no precipitation there at all 

 for six months of the year, nearly the 

 whole of the rainfall being limited to three 

 months. And, lest it may be thought that 

 melting snow keeps the ground moist during 

 the summer, it may be added that the heavi- 

 est forest-belt of the Sierra is quite below 

 the line above which snow rests for any 

 considerable time, and that the soil in that 

 belt is usually perfectly dry at the surface, 

 and even dusty, for six months of the year, 

 and often much more." 



Electrical Phenomena exhibited by Ve- 

 nus's Fly-Trap. The electrical phenom- 

 ena exhibited by Dioncea muscipula have 

 been investigated by Dr. Burdon-Sander- 

 son, who finds that normally the whole leaf 

 with the petiole is somewhat negative, but, 

 when excited by a stimulus, an electrical 



