276 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ontological work was carried on on the two 

 lines of the identification and correlation of 

 geological formations by the organic remains 

 contained in them, and of the study, from 

 a biological point of view, of the faunas and 

 floras contained in the rock for the pur- 

 pose of obtaining a critical knowledge of 

 the genera and species, and of the evolu- 

 tion of life and its relations to the environ- 

 ment during geological time. In the divi- 

 sion of chemistry and physics a series of 

 valuable measures of earth temperatures was 

 obtained in a dry well four thousand five 

 hundred feet deep at Wheeling, W. Va. 

 Accompanying the report are papers on the 

 Origm and Nature of Soils, by Prof. Shaler ; 

 the Lafayette Formation (or the Atlantic 

 Coastal Plain), by W J McGee ; the North 

 American Continent during Cambrian Time, 

 by C. D. Walcott ; and the Eruptive Rocks 

 of Electric Peak and Sepulchre Mountain, 

 Yellowstone National Park, by J. P. Iddings. 

 The irrigation survey embraces two divi- 

 sions of primary importance, and a third, of 

 more immediate apparent utility, dependent 

 upon them. First is the systematic mapping 

 of the arid regions ; the second division con- 

 sists of measurements of the amount of water 

 flowing in the most important streams and 

 computations of the quantity available each 

 day of the year, either for immediate irriga- 

 tion or for storage purposes ; and the third 

 division consists of engineering examinations 

 of such localities as the knowledge of the to- 

 pography and of the water supply seemed to 

 indicate as favorable for great irrigation de- 

 velopment 3. The results of the third year's 

 work of the survey, except the topograph- 

 ical maps which are issued from time to time, 

 are shown in this report, which gives a de- 

 scription of 147 reservoir sites surveyed and 

 reported for segregation, with the hydro- 

 graphical data, fully illustrated by diagrams. 

 The report is accompanied by a description, 

 by Mr. Herbert M. Wilson, of the irrigation 

 works of India as a practical example of irri- 

 gation engineering. The total area of land 

 segregated for the 147 reservoirs 33 in 

 California, 46 in Colorado, 27 in Montana, 

 39 in New Mexico, and 2 in Nevada is 

 165,932 acres, which will afford a water 

 surface, should all the reservoirs be filled 

 to the height designated in the segregations, 

 of 108,350 acres, and would be capable of 



supplying about a million and a half acres 

 of cultivated land. A caution is given to 

 the effect that the oscillations of water sup- 

 ply from year to year are so great that 

 measurements made in any one year must 

 be looked upon with distrust if large inter- 

 ests are at stake. 



Race and Language. By Andre Lefevre, 

 Professor in the Anthropological School, 

 Paris. The International Scientific Se- 

 ries, Volume LXXII. New York : D. 

 Appleton & Co. Pp. 424. Price, $1.50. 



Wherever the several races of man have 

 spread they have carried their respective 

 languages, so that discoveries concerning the 

 distribution of peoples throw light upon the 

 history of language and vice versa. Hence 

 there is much advantage in considering race 

 and language together as is done in this 

 book. The author finds in the history of 

 language abundant traces of evolution, start- 

 ing from inarticulate cries and passing 

 through the syllabic, agglutinative, and in- 

 flected stages to the highest stage the ana- 

 lytic. Certain languages have stopped on the 

 lower planes of development and the people 

 who speak them are, for the most part, those 

 who have not gone forward in civilization 

 nor spread out from their early homes over 

 other lands. Thus, while inflected languages, 

 and especially the Indo-European family, 

 have been widely diffused, the agglutinative 

 tongues have retreated to the borders of the 

 civilized world. Taking up each class of 

 languages in turn, the author passes in re- 

 view the monosyllabic group of the extreme 

 East, the agglutinative idioms of Central and 

 Southern Asia, the Malayo-Polynesian and 

 the African languages, telling something 

 about the peoples by whom each is employed. 

 The literature, rudimentary in several cases, 

 of each group is also described. Thus we 

 learn that the genius of the Malay is less 

 suited to moral treatises than to tales and 

 legendary histories. The most original con- 

 tribution of the people of the Sunda Islands 

 to literature is their popular poetry, and their 

 kinsmen, the Polynesians, share their gift of 

 poetical improvisation. After the African a 

 class of agglutinative languages which the 

 author calls polysynthetic is discussed. This 

 class includes Basque and Eskimo, Algon- 

 kin and Iroquois, Nahuatl and Ketchua. 



