SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



853 



suits of a historical research appear in a pa- 

 per on The Coronado Expedition, 1540-'42, 

 by George P. Winship, of Harvard Univer- 

 sity. This expedition was sent out by Men- 

 doza, Governor of " New Spain," in southern 

 Mexico, and discovered the Pueblo Indians 

 of New Mexico, the Grand Canon of the Colo- 

 rado, and the bison of the great plains. Mr. 

 Winship presents the original text of Coro- 

 nado's report and an English translation, to- 

 gether with translations of shorter papers 

 relating to the expedition, and a historical 

 introduction giving the events which led up 

 to this undertaking and the circumstances 

 under which it was carried out. Many re- 

 productions of sixteenth-century maps and 

 modern pictures of Pueblo Indians and their 

 dwellings accompany the memoir. The 

 ghost dance, which has been for half a 

 dozen years a word to inspire terror in re- 

 ports from the Indian reservations, is de 

 scribed by James Mooney in his paper on 

 The Ghost-dance Religion and the Sioux Out- 

 break of 1890. The dance is the manifesta- 

 tion of an epidemic of religious frenzy which 

 was transmitted from tribe to tribe over one 

 third of the area of the United States and 

 then died away. Mr. Mooney accompanies 

 his account with descriptions of similar rites 

 among the Indians and similar frenzies 

 among Christians and Mohammedans. The 

 memoir is copiously illustrated. 



Nearly two thirds of the volume contain- 

 ing the Report of the United States Commis- 

 sioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1895 is de- 

 voted to a Check List of the Fishes and 

 Fishlike Vertebrates of North and Middle 

 America, by Jordan and Evermann. Owing 

 to ill health, the late Commissioner McDon- 

 ald was unable to prepare a report, and 

 the work of the year is shown in the re- 

 ports of assistants. Several special investi- 

 gations are described in appended papers. 



The statistical matter in the eighth an- 

 nual report of the Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mission on the Statistics of Railways in the 

 United States follows the same order and 

 covers the same ground as in previous years. 

 It yields many evidences of continued busi- 

 ness depression, although there has been a 

 net decrease of twenty-three in the number 

 of roads in the hands of receivers. Special 

 features of this report are, first, compari- 



sons not only with the preceding year, but 

 so far as possible with the years from 1890 

 to 1894 inclusive; second, the compilation 

 of operating expenses for 1894 and 1895 ; 

 and, third, the table showing revenue and 

 density of traffic for all roads whose gross 

 revenue exceeds $3,000,000 a year. 



The aim of Appletons' Home-Reading 

 Books evidently is to give young persons a 

 broader view of the world in which their 

 lives are to be passed than they can get 

 from their school books. It is not necessary 

 that all knowledge should be gained by 

 drudgery over set tasks ; much may be im- 

 parted by books like these, which interest at 

 the same time that they inform. In the 

 little volume on The Plant World which he 

 has prepared for this series, Mr. Frank Vin- 

 cent has made an excellent collection of the 

 romances and realities of the botanical king- 

 dom. He has taken from the writings of 

 American and foreign naturalists selections 

 describing plants remarkable for their 

 beauty, size, peculiar form, or great useful- 

 ness, and has scattered among them a few 

 tributes from the poets. Mr. Vincent has 

 not sought for the remote or startling alone. 

 He calls upon Bonifas-Guizot to tell the uses 

 of the cocoanut tree, and Paul Marcoy to 

 describe the Victoria Regia, but he has also 

 something about common grasses by Mar- 

 garet Plues, and includes Whittier's poem 

 on the pumpkin. Mr. Vincent has been in 

 every quarter of the globe himself, and may 

 be depended upon to select only accurate 

 descriptions of foreign plants. Fifteen full- 

 page photo-engravings add to the attractive- 

 ness of the volume. (Appletons, 60 cents, 

 net.) 



Prof. JZdward L. Nichols, already favor- 

 ably known as an author of text books on 

 physics, has produced an elementary work, 

 under the title The Outlines of Physics, which 

 is intended to be a fair equivalent for the 

 year of advanced mathematics now required 

 for entrance to many colleges (Macmillan, 

 $1.40). In order to possess sufficient dis- 

 ciplinary value for this purpose, says the au- 

 thor, " physics must be taught by laboratory 

 methods, and the experiments should be, aa 

 far as possible, of a quantitative nature." 

 This book is designed as a text-book and a 

 laboratory guide combined. " In the selec- 



