SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



133 



of Clark University, has endeavored to pre- 

 sent the mathematics of the subject in a 

 form more assimilable by the student than 

 has been available heretofore (Macmillan, 

 $3.50). Since graduates of American col- 

 leges are, as a rule, insufficiently prepared 

 for taking up mathematical physics, the au- 

 thor has prefixed a mathematical introduction 

 and a treatment of the Newtonian potential 

 function to this work. For a similar reason 

 he has included a treatment of the funda- 

 mental principles of mechanics. These mat- 

 ters occupy nearly half of the volume. Little 

 or no reference has been made to experimental 

 methods in electricity, these being left to other 

 works. The general purpose of the treatise 

 is to present the results of the electrical 

 theory as it stands to-day, after the labors 

 of Faraday, Maxwell, Helmholtz, Hertz, and 

 Heaviside. 



The Bulletin of the Department of Labor 

 for May, 1897 (No. 10), contains a statistical 

 report of one hundred and twelve pages on 

 the Condition of the Negro in Various 

 Cities. The investigation which furnished 

 the data for this report was originally under- 

 taken to ascertain the causes of the ex- 

 cessive mortality of negroes in Chattanooga, 

 Savannah, and Boston. Afterward it was 

 extended to seventeen Southern cities and 

 the city of Cambridge, Mass., and besides 

 statistics of sickness and mortality it has 

 been made to embrace facts concerning sizes 

 of families, number of rooms occupied, rents 

 paid, sanitary condition of houses, occupa- 

 tions, earnings, and the number of defective, 

 maimed, and deformed persons. The sta- 

 tistics do not cover the whole of the cities in 

 which the inv estigation was made. A repre- 

 sentative group of houses was taken in each, 

 as the persons who gave their time to the work 

 could not do more. This bulletin contains 

 also a comparison of figures as to the work 

 of men, women, and children for periods ten 

 years apart, and miscellaneous minor articles. 



Volume XXVIII, Part I, of the Harvard 

 Observatory Annals is a catalogue of Spectra 

 of Bright Stars discussed by Antonia C. 

 Mauri/. The spectra of six hundred and 

 eighty-one of the brightest stars north of 

 declination 30, of which about forty- 

 eight hundred photographs were obtained, 

 are comprised in this catalogue. As the in- 



vestigations were made several years ago, 

 they could not take account of the recent 

 discoveries respecting the spectrum of heli- 

 um, but a discussion of the relation of the 

 spectra of stars of the Orion type to that of 

 helium is contained in supplementary notes. 

 Volume XXXVI of the Annals completes 

 the series of five volumes devoted to Obser- 

 vations of Stars by Prof. William A. Rogers. 

 A list of errata for the whole series of vol- 

 umes is included. 



In the Fifteenth Annual Report of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology the director, after de- 

 scribing the work of the year, proceeds to 

 outline conclusions that have been reached 

 by the bureau in regard to regimentation, 

 the satisfaction of justice, and related mat- 

 ters in savage society. The chief of the 

 accompanying papers is by William H. 

 Holmes, on Stone Implements of the Poto- 

 mac Chesapeake Tidewater. Extensive de- 

 posits of rudely flaked stones are found in 

 and about the city of Washington, and care- 

 ful study of them has shown that they are 

 on the sites of workshops connected with 

 extensive quarries. From examinations of 

 large quantities of rejectage it has been de- 

 termined that the product of the flaking 

 operations was a leaf-shaped blade. It was 

 further ascertained that such leaf-shaped 

 blades are to be found on Indian village 

 sites in all parts of the surrounding country. 

 Studies of quarries of other materials in the 

 neighboring high land gave similar results, 

 and in order to round out the subject all 

 known classes of implements have been 

 studied. These studies have not revealed 

 the slightest evidence as to the occupancy of 

 the region by any earlier people than the 

 known Indian tribes. Jesse Walter Fewke3 

 contributes a memoir on The Group of 

 Tusayan Ceremonials called Katcinas, which 

 is copiously illustrated with cuts and colored 

 plates showing the masks and other para- 

 phernalia used in these rites. There is a 

 special report on The Repair of Casa Grande 

 Ruin, by Cosmos Mindeleff, and other papers 

 are The Siouan Indians, by W J McGee, and 

 Siouan Sociology, by James 0. Dorsey. 



The work on Stones for Building and 

 Decoration, by George P. Merrill, originally 

 published in 1891, now appears in a revised 

 and enlarged edition. Reading matter and 



