LITERARY NOTICES. 



129 



working student it is far too meager, and 

 lacks references to original material ; as a 

 popular book for the uninformed it is too 

 condensed to be of much use. At the out- 

 set a list of books is given for consultation, 

 and this will strike one as a curious collec- 

 tion for the purpose. In the preface the 

 author says, " I am at a loss to imagine 

 why it is considered almost wrong to write 

 about physical science without having made 

 original experiments." The advantage of 

 having made original experiments leads a 

 writer to greater exactness, and, above all, 

 to appreciate the relative value of state- 

 ments and facts. Her allusions to the fixed 

 ascidians as being comparatively free from 

 vicissitudes and dangers in contrast with 

 locomotive forms derived from the same 

 stock, is misleading. The helpless creature 

 nibbled at by fishes, infested by extraneous 

 growths, unable to fight or flee, is seriously 

 handicapped in the struggle for existence. 



We know of no evidence to show that 

 the duration of life of a species is gov- 

 erned other than by the law of natural 

 selection. An interesting article, by Prof. 

 "Verrell (Science, vol. i, p. 303), would have 

 given the author some hints as to the prob- 

 able cause of the rapid disappearance of 

 the larger vertebrates in past times. An 

 allusion is made to the divergence of the 

 Ainos from the Japanese, whereas the 

 Ainos covered the islands of Japan before 

 the Japanese were crystallized into a nation. 



Silly flights of fancy are quite out of 

 place in a serious work of this nature ; but 

 the attempt to enliven a dignified discourse 

 by lugging in extracts of poetry or non- 

 sense is peculiarly English, and so must be 

 endured. 



The Progress Report on Irrigation in tlie 

 United States, prepared by Special Agent 

 Richard J. Hinton, on account of the short- 

 ness of time during which the survey had 

 been at work when it was made (sixty-one 

 days), does not include results of the investi- 

 gation itself, but only the returns of corre- 

 spondence with experts and persons inter- 

 ested in the subject, invited in order to show 

 the conditions and development of irriga- 

 tion as applied to the soil for the purposes 

 of cultivation. The large number of letters 

 received shows how extensive and growing 



VOL. XL. — 11 



is the interest in the subject, and promises 

 that the oflBce of the irrigation inquiry will 

 soon have a record of all that has been done 

 about it. As among our own people, prac- 

 tical irrigation appears to have begun with 

 the Mormon settlement on the Great Salt 

 Lake ; but has been practiced by the Indi- 

 ans in Arizona and New Mexico for five 

 hundred years. General irrigation really be- 

 gan in the United States with the founda- 

 tion of the colony at Greeley in Colorado, in 

 ISvO, which was successful at once. Its de- 

 velopment, slow till 1880, has been more 

 rapid since then. One of the sequences of 

 its adoption is the appearance of a tendency 

 toward division of large holdings of land 

 and its more or less rapid disposal in small 

 bodies. Another incident is a movement 

 among land, mortgage, and trust companies 

 to form syndicates for developing the water- 

 supply of the plains country, for the pur- 

 pose, of course, of improving the security 

 for their loans. Horticulture in California 

 is said to be in great part the result of irriga- 

 tion, as is illustrated in the great fruit farms 

 at Riverside, iluch stress is laid upon the 

 value of the " undersheet water " of the 

 Arkansas and Platte and other valleys, the 

 results of the survey of which, by Chief- 

 Engineer Xettleton, are noticed below. The 

 curious fact is mentioned concerning this 

 water that cultivation tends to draw it up. 

 Thus at Fresno, where the first cultivators 

 had to dig fifty feet for it, they now get 

 it at from eight to twelve feet below the 

 surface. 



The Report of Artesian and Underfow In- 

 vestigation between the ninety-seventh degree 

 of west longitude and the foot-hills of the 

 Rocky Mountains, presented by Edwin S. 

 KeffletoT), in response to a call by the Senate, 

 is also a progress report, and relates to work 

 done in November and December, 1890, in 

 parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, 

 covering particularly the valleys of the 

 Platte and the Arkansas. Valuable features 

 of the report are the plan and profiles show- 

 ing in detail the location and relation of 

 the surface of the underground water, as 

 found in rivers, wells, springs, and pools, as 

 well as the elevation of the surface of the 

 country along the line surveyed. There ap- 

 pears to be usually sufficient rainfall in this 

 region during the whole year, if it were 



