LITERARY NOTICES. 



135 



partments, the papers in French have a 

 grace and beauty of style which show that 

 the language of France has lost nothing 

 by its study having been transferred to 

 America for more than two centuries. The 

 sketches of the first settlers of Canada are 

 sufficiently well given to deserve introduc- 

 tion to the readers of the continent. 



Dr. Daniel Wilson's paper, on the pre- 

 Aryan American man, is a valuable contri- 

 bution to the study of the Indian tribes, 

 upon whose history discovery and research 

 are every year throwing more light. Dr. 

 Alpheus Todd, the constitutional historian, 

 whose death occurred last January, has given 

 us a paper on the establishment of free 

 public libraries, with valuable hints derived 

 from his long experience as parliamentary 

 librarian. 



The scientific contributions to the Trans- 

 actions are noteworthy. With an area for 

 the scope of the naturalist as extensive as 

 our own, the range of research and explora- 

 tion in the Dominion affords splendid oppor- 

 tunities to her men of science. In develop- 

 ing knowledge concerning the vast territory 

 of Canada, the Geological Survey has done 

 noble work. That survey, mainly estab- 

 lished by the exertions of the late Sir Will- 

 iam E. Logan, with the co-operation of Dr. 

 Hunt and Mr. Billings, has given scope to 

 the acumen and research of men such as the 

 Dawsons, father and son. Bell, and Harring- 

 ton, whose labors in the fields of systematic 

 geology and paleontology are known and 

 valued by the students of both Europe and 

 America. The volume before us gives a 

 paper by Principal Dawson on the creta- 

 ceous and tertiary floras of British Columbia 

 and the Northwest Territories, eight fine 

 quarto illustrations accompanying his paper. 

 Ilis son, Dr. George M. Dawson, describes a 

 general section of the geology from the 

 Laurentian axis to the Rocky Mountains. 

 Dr. T. Sterry Hunt contributes a paper on 

 the geological history of serpentines, where- 

 in he defends by new arguments their 

 aqueous origin, a thesis which he has long 

 maintained. Incidentally to this, he con- 

 denses into a few pages the history of the 

 pre-Cambrian rocks of Southern Europe 

 with their included serpentines, and shows 

 in this connection that the great groups of 



these rocks previously pointed out by him 

 in America are equally developed in the Old 



World. In his memoir on the Taconic ques- 

 tion in geology. Dr. Hunt begins by a trib- 

 ute to the labors of Amos Eaton, the found- 

 er of American stratigraphical geology. He 

 then gives in detail an account of the so- 

 called Taconian or Taconic rocks, the true 

 age of which has been the subject of so 

 much dispute ; by a wide induction of facts 

 gleaned from all Eastern North America, he 

 proceeds to show that these rocks are of 

 pre-Cambrian age, and probably paralleled 

 with the youngest pre-Cambrian group of 

 the Alps described by him in his preceding 

 memoir. These rocks, it may be said, in 

 their wide range of distribution, include the 

 white statuary marbles of both Vermont 

 and Italy. This paper, of some fifty pages, 

 is the first half of Dr. Hunt's elaborate 

 memoir, and terminates in a comprehensive 

 review of the early geological history of 

 Eastern North America. 



Although geology is much the best rep- 

 resented science in these Transactions, the 

 other departments of the sections give us 

 original papers of value. Dr. E. Haanel 

 contributes an account of experiments in 

 using hydriodic acid as a blow-pipe reagent, 

 and four remarkably well-executed plates in 

 colors serve to illustrate his paper. A se- 

 ries of reports of the transit of Venus, De- 

 cember 6, 1882, show the wide interest 

 taken in that event in the chain of Cana- 

 dian cities stretching from Montreal to Win- 

 nipeg. The observations, as a whole, were 

 satisfactory. 



Dr. Robert Bell's explanation of the 

 causes of the fertility of the Northwest 

 shows the immense variety of natural forces 

 which decide whether a region shall or shall 

 not furnish a nation with food and fuel. 

 Mr. W. Saunders's papers on Canadian for- 

 estry and on the noxious insects of the 

 country are suggestive and timely. 



The publishing committee of these 

 Transactions remark with pardonable pride 

 that the paper, type, and illustrations are all 

 of home production. 



A System of Rhetoric. By C. W. Bardeen. 

 New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 

 814. Price, $1.50. 



Part I of this book is entitled "Sen- 

 tence-Making," and contains a large amount 

 of such matter as is usually found in the 

 " false-syntax " section of grammars. Part 



