420 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tern, Jenness Miller and her Work, Color 

 and Calisthenics, Prohibition, etc. The price 

 is $2 a year. 



Prof. Robert T. Hill contributes to the 

 First Annual Report of the Geological Sur- 

 vey of Texas A Brief Description of the Cre- 

 taceous Rocks of Texas, and their Economic 

 Value. The areas covered by these rocks 

 comprise the tracts known as the Black 

 Prairie, the Grand Prairie, the two Cross 

 Timbers, and certain smaller regions. These 

 form a broad belt of fertile country across 

 the heart of the State, in which lie the prin- 

 cipal inland cities of Texas. Prof. Hill's 

 paper describes and locates the several de- 

 posits of chalky sands, chalky clays, and 

 chalky limestones which make up the sur- 

 face formations of this territory. The au- 

 thor gives also a table in which the arrange- 

 ment of the rock sheets is summarized, and 

 describes the main disturbances of the strata, 

 illustrating them with a diagram. The sev- 

 eral economic features of the Cretaceous 

 system are touched upon by themselves, and 

 the investigations in regard to them which 

 the geologists of the survey hope to make 

 are alluded to. 



We have received an address by Colonel 

 George E. Waring, Jr., on The Sewerage of 

 Columbus, Ohio, which, although largely lo- 

 cal in application, contains also the latest 

 views of this well-known sanitary engineer 

 on the general subject of sewerage. An in- 

 teresting discussion that followed the de- 

 livery of the address is printed with it, and 

 brings out a number of points more fully 

 and clearly than is usually done in continu- 

 ous treatises. 



The Wagner Free Institute of Science of 

 Philadelphia devotes the third volume of its 

 Transactions to Contributions to the Tertiary 

 Fauna of Florida, by William H. Ball. Part 

 I of Mr. Dall's contributions on Pulmonate, 

 Opisthobranchiate, and Orthodont Gastro- 

 pods occupies the whole of the volume. 

 The text is accompanied by twelve fine 

 plates, each containing from ten to twenty 

 figures. 



The Neio England Meteorological Society 

 has issued a volume of Investigations for the 

 Year 18S9, prepared under the supervision 

 of its new director, Prof. W. M. Davis. In 

 addition to the tabulated reports of observ- 

 ers, and the review of the year's weather, 



which the society publishes yearly, this vol- 

 ume contains several papers on special top- 

 ics. The most extended of these is an In- 

 vestigation of the Sea-breeze, conducted by 

 W. M. Davis, L. G. Schultz, and R. De C. 

 Ward, with the aid of observers at over one 

 hundred stations. There is also a short 

 paper on Characteristics of New England 

 Climate, by Prof. Winslow Upton. 



Among the reprints which have come to 

 us is an essay on Tornadoes, by A. McAdie, 

 which won the second prize in a recent com- 

 petition, and was published in The American 

 Meteorological Journal. It is a technical 

 discussion of the nature of tornadoes and 

 the practicability of predicting them. The 

 author believes that a careful study of the 

 secondary whirlings in the atmosphere would 

 reveal the causes of the seeming irregulari- 

 ties of the primary whirlings, and make 

 possible not only the prediction of torna- 

 does, but also greater success in foretelling 

 general weather conditions. 



William L. Green issues from Honolulu 

 a pamphlet under the title Notice of Prof. 

 James B. Buna's " Characteristics of Volca- 

 noes," in which he criticises certain state- 

 ments in Prof. Dana's work that differ from 

 his own views and observations, as pub- 

 lished in his Vestiges of the Molten Globe. 



The president's address at the thirteenth 

 annual meeting of the American Bar Asso- 

 ciation, delivered by Henry Hitchcock; LL. D., 

 has been printed from the Proceedings 

 of the Association, with the title A Year's 

 legislation. As prescribed it reviews "the 

 most noteworthy changes in the statute law 

 on points of general interest made in the sev- 

 eral States and by Congress during the pre- 

 ceding year." The national legislation in- 

 cludes the Administrative Customs bill, the 

 Dependent Pensions act, the Silver bill, and 

 acts in relation to the World's Fair, the ad- 

 mission of six new States into the Union, 

 desertions from the army, an inland quaran- 

 tine, trusts, the original-package decision, 

 and bridging the Hudson at New York. 

 Mr. Hitchcock expresses regret that no bill 

 had yet been passed for the relief of the 

 Supreme and other courts of the United 

 States. Statutes had been passed by the 

 Legislatures of twenty-one States and Ter- 

 ritories during the year which he covers, 



