SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



>>3 



Military Academy at West Point by General 

 P. S. Michie, dean of the faculty of the 

 academy, and the late A. H. Rice, ex- Gov- 

 ernor of Massachusetts, gave Some Inside 

 Views of the Gubernatorial Office. Six of 

 the addresses were on public affairs ; Henry 

 W. Cannon spoke on Banking and Currency, 

 Montgomery Schuyler on Architecture, An- 

 drew Carnegie on Wealth and its Uses, while 

 pure and applied science were represented by 

 the lecture of Albon Man on Electricity, of 

 General William A. Hammond on Brains and 

 Muscles, of ex- Governor Alonzo B. Cornell 

 on The Electro-magnetic Telegraph, and of 

 Colonel F. V. Greene on Roads. The vol- 

 ume contains the portrait and a short bio- 

 graphical sketch of each lecturer. (F. T. 

 Neely.) 



The summary and index of Legislation 

 by States in 1895, issued by the New York 

 State Library (University of the State of New 

 York, 35 cents), contains 4,84V entries. This 

 bulletin, which has now been published for 

 six years, is of great service in putting State 

 legislators in possession of the recent work 

 done in other States, and thereby promoting 

 progress and uniformity. A new feature 

 this year is a separate table of constitutional 

 amendments arranged by States, showing the 

 result of the vote on all amendments in 1894 

 and 1895, and giving also those to be sub- 

 mitted to future vote. 



Having made a thorough lexicographic 

 study of mineral names for the new dictionary 

 of the Philological Society, Prof. Albert H. 

 Chester has recently issued the results of his 

 labors separately as A Dictionary of the 

 Names of Minerals (New York : Wiley, $3.50 ; 

 London : Chapman & Hall). He has aimed to 

 give with each name its correct spelling, its 

 author, a reference to its first publication, 

 its original spelling, its derivation, the reason 

 for choosing this particular name, and a 

 short description of the mineral to which it 

 belongs. In a few cases he was unable to 

 determine one or more of these points, and 

 he sends out with the volume a circular ask- 

 ing aid in securing the lacking information. 

 Nearly five thousand names are included in 

 the dictionary, and many of the facts con- 

 cerning them are now given in a vocabulary 

 for the first time, having been gathered from 

 little known books or from private communi- 



cations. A considerable number of imagi- 

 nary derivations and other errors are cor- 

 rected in this work. An introduction contains 

 an interesting history of attempts to system- 

 atize mineralogical names, accounts of the 

 introduction of some errors, and other simi- 

 lar matter. A list of works cited fills nine- 

 teen pages, and an index to the authors of 

 mineral names occupies twenty-four more. 



77ie Annual TAlerary Index, edited by 

 W. L Fletcher and R. R. Bowker (The Pub- 

 lishers' Weekly, $3.50), is an annual supple- 

 ment to Poole's valuable index to periodicals 

 and, by the addition of one feature after an- 

 other, has become much more than that. The 

 volume for 1895 contains besides the Index 

 to Periodicals an Index to General Litera- 

 ture, which rather ambitious title denotes an 

 index to the contents of one hundred and 

 thirty or forty volumes of essays, biographi- 

 cal sketches, etc., published in 1895. There 

 is an Author-index covering these two lists, 

 which is followed by a list of the American 

 and English bibliographies that have ap- 

 peared (in treatises or separately) in the 

 course of the year, a Necrology of Writers, 

 and an Index to Date3 of Principal Events. 

 This last is a new feature, and besides its in- 

 dependent historical value it is practically an 

 index to the files of any newspaper. 



The second annual volume of MM. H 

 Beaunis and A. Binet's Annie Psychologique 

 (Psychological Annual) for 1895 is much 

 larger than the first, and forms a book of 

 1010 pages. The volume, which is pub- 

 lished from the Laboratory of Physiological 

 Psychology of the Sorbonne, contain?, under 

 the heading of Memoirs of Collaborators, 

 papers on Abnormal and Morbid Characters, 

 by Prof. Ribot ; A Glance at Comparative 

 Psychology, by M. Fosel ; An Experiment in 

 Reading in which Certain Categories of 

 Words are omitted, by M. Flourney; On 

 Intellectual Phenomena, by M. Bererdon ; A 

 Note on the Conditions favoring Hypnotism, 

 by M. Gley ; and Illusions of Weight, by M. 

 Bi6rnl6et. Other papers are given under the 

 headings Works from the Laboratory and 

 General Reviews. The second part of the 

 volume contains analypes of publications and 

 papers that tills fourteen chapters, each cov- 

 ering its separate department, with subdi- 

 visions : four j W (Tensemble, or General 



