LITERARY NOTICES. 



56J 



New York Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion. Third Annual Ecport of the Board 

 of Control, for 1884. Albany: Weed, 

 Parsons & Co. Tp. 424, with Plates. 



The station is reported as now better 

 equipped for its work than at any previous 

 period. Not only have the apparatus for 

 scientific and practical work been provided, 

 but information has been and is being ac- 

 quired regarding the condition of our soil 

 and climate. The work at such a station is 

 necessarily cumulative in its character, and 

 each year must mark improvement in con- 

 ditions whereby previous work may become 

 more available. Considerable space in the 

 report is devoted to the examination of 

 "duplicates," under the conviction that 

 where true duplicates can not be obtained, 

 " it is unwise to expend our energy in at- 

 tempting work over which we can have no 

 check. . . . Indeed, until agricultural sci- 

 ence, so called, can be subjected to the tests 

 that are recognized as essential to correct- 

 ness in other sciences, we can not hope for 

 that progress which we desire." The most 

 important feature of the present report is 

 the description and classification of the va- 

 rieties of com, which are graphically illus- 

 trated in the plates. The attempt at classi- 

 fication has been extended to the varieties 

 of vegetables, of which some twelve hun- 

 dred have been grown, "but the work is 

 a difficult one, and requires much careful 

 study." Other subjects embraced in the 

 report are the trial of germinations, the 

 rooting habits of plants, nitrogen-supply, 

 feeding-experiments, and experiments with 

 milk. 



Italian Popular Tales. By Thomas Fred- 

 erick Crane, Professor of the Romance 

 Languages in Cornell University. Bos- 

 ton and New York : Houghton, Mifflin, 

 & Co. Pp. 389. Price, 82.50. 



The growing interest in the popular 

 tales of Europe, and in the new branch of 

 anthropological research, folk-lore, is the 

 justification for the appearance of this 

 handsome volume. By popular tales, the 

 translator means the stories that are handed 

 down by word of mouth from one genera- 

 tion to another of illiterate people, serving 

 almost exclusively to amuse but seldom to 

 instruct. They may be roughly divided into 

 three classes: nursery tales, fairy stories, 

 VOL. xxvin. — 36 



and jests. They were regarded with con- 

 tempt, by the learned till the brothers Grimm 

 some sixty years ago collected those of Ger- 

 many and introduced them to the public. 

 Now they are industriously sought for and 

 collected from all parts of the world. The 

 stories in the present volume arc, for the 

 most part, presented for the first time to 

 the English reader, and have been translated 

 from recent Italian collections, which give 

 them exactly as they were taken down from 

 the mouths of the people. The stories are 

 annotated for comment and illustration, and 

 the subject is further elucidated by a his- 

 tory, in the introduction, of the principal 

 Italian collections, and a bibliography. 



Two Years in the Jungle. By William 

 T. HoRNADAT. New York : Charles 

 Scribner's Sons. Pp. 512, with Map 

 and Plates. Price, $4. 



Mr. Hornaday is chief taxidermist in 

 the United States National Museum, and 

 was for several years collector for the nat- 

 ural science establishment of Professor 

 Henry A. Ward, of Rochester, New York. 

 The observations and adventures related in 

 this book are such as happened to him while 

 on a collecting tour for that gentleman, in 

 the course of which he spent two years 

 in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and 

 Borneo. That which he describes in it is 

 offered as a faithful pen-picture " of what 

 may be seen and done by almost any healthy 

 young man in two years of ups and downs 

 in the East Indies." The author says that 

 he has labored in preparing his pages " to 

 avoid all forms of exaggeration, and to rep- 

 resent everything with photographic accu- 

 racy as to facts and figures. It is easy to 

 overestimate and color too highly, and I 

 have fought hard to keep out of my story 

 every elephant and monkey who had no 

 right to a place in it. I consider it the 

 highest duty of a traveler to avoid careless- 

 ness in the statement of facts. A narrative 

 of a journey is not a novel, in which the 

 writer may put down as seen anything that 

 might have been seen." 



Journal of the American Akademe. Al- 

 exander Wilder, Editor. Newark, New 

 Jersey. Pp. 24. 



The American Akademe is an associa- 

 tion having for its purpose to promote the 



