8 5 o 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and to the various features of the land pro- 

 duced by them. There is also a chapter on 

 the reciprocal influences of man and Nature, 

 and one on economic products. Most of the 

 examples are drawn from the United States. 

 There are four appendixes devoted respect- 

 ively to meteorological methods, topographic 

 maps, suggestions to teachers, and questions 

 on the text. The volume is copiously illus- 

 trated with photo-engravings of varying de- 

 grees of distinctness, maps and diagrams, 

 and a list of reference books is given at the 

 end of each chapter. 



In his First Year in French, designed for 

 young pupils (American Book Co., 50 cents), 

 L. C. Syms has aimed to unite the conversa- 

 tional and the translation methods of teach- 

 ing the language. Directions for the use of 

 the book are given, and French-English and 

 English-French vocabularies are appended. 



The same publishers have issued the first 

 part of a series of simple French readings 

 under the title Contes et Legendes (60 cents), 

 by H. A. Guerber, author of Myths of Greece 

 and Rome, etc. With the exception of the 

 first one of the series these stories are not 

 likely to be known to American pupils. 

 There is a vocabulary. 



The technique of the organic chemical 

 laboratory is a considerable and somewhat in- 

 tricate body of knowledge. Through oral in- 

 struction the student becomes acquainted 

 with those devices and forms of apparatus re- 

 quired for common operations, getting, where 

 there is a choice of processes, the one which 

 his instructor has had the best success with. 

 When he comes to practice his profession he 

 gathers others as he has occasion for them 

 from the various journals for the publication 

 of chemical researches, and sometimes fails 

 to find what he wants at the right time. In 

 order to make such knowledge conveniently 

 accessible, Dr. Lassar-Cohn, of Konigsberg, 

 several years ago prepared a Laboratory 

 Manual of Organic Chemistry, from the sec- 

 ond edition of which Prof. Alexander Smith, 

 of Chicago, has made a translation (Macmil- 

 lan, 8s. 6d, $2.25). It groups processes gen- 

 erally applicable under such heads as crystal- 

 lization, distillation, extraction, determination 

 of melting points and of molecular weights, 

 sealed tubes, and sublimation. In this part 

 of the work a large number of pieces of ap- 



paratus are described and some forty are fig- 

 ured. About three fourths of the volume is 

 devoted to special processes of condensation, 

 the preparation of esters, halogen compounds, 

 nitro-derivatives, and other substances, oxi- 

 dation, reduction, saponification, etc. There 

 is also a chapter on organic analysis. The 

 volume is indexed and has a table for finding 

 the year of any volume of the chief chemical 

 journals. 



From the Department of the Interior we 

 have received Volumes XXIII and XXIV, con- 

 sisting of monographs from the United States 

 Geological Survey. The first of these deals 

 with the Geology of the Green Mountains in 

 Massachusetts. The general structure and 

 correlation is first considered, and then Hoosac 

 Mountain and Mount Greylock are taken up 

 individually. There are many valuable plates 

 and maps to illustrate the text. Volume 

 XXIV is entitled Mollusca and Crustacea of 

 the Miocene Formations of New Jersey. The 

 work seems to have been done with care, and 

 the relation of the paleontology of New Jer- 

 sey to the structural conditions prevailing in 

 other parts of the United States makes it of 

 national interest. Unusually good illustra- 

 tions are numerous. 



Volume XIV, for 1894, of The United 

 States Fish Commission Bulletins, contains, as 

 these publications regularly do, the results of 

 a large number of careful observations on 

 the life history and habits of American fish 

 in all parts of the country. Among many 

 interesting papers we especially note the fol- 

 lowing : Notes on Two Hitherto Unrecognized 

 Species of American Whitefishes, by Hugh 

 M. Smith, M. D. ; On the Appliances for col- 

 lecting Pelagic Organisms, with special ref- 

 erence to those employed by the United 

 States Fish Commission, by Z. L. Tanner, 

 United States Navy ; Feeding and Rearing 

 Fishes, particularly Trout, under Domestica- 

 tion, by William F. Page ; and A Statistical 

 Report on the Fisheries of the Middle Atlan- 

 tic States, by Hugh M. Smith, M. D. 



The Stark Munro Letters, by A. Conan 

 Doyle, is an attractive little volume of 385 

 pages (Appletons, $1.50). It is an ac- 

 count of the troubles and difficulties which a 

 young physician, Dr. Stark Munro, had to 

 overcome at the outset of his career. The 

 story is told in a series of letters from the 



