June 13, 1901] 



NATURE 



and plans ; whilst short references are made to the 

 most notable masonry dams in other countries. La 

 Grange dam in California, for diverting the water of the 

 Tuolumne River for irrigation, 125 feet high, resembles 

 the Vyrnwy dam in section, the outflow in both cases 

 taking place over the top of the dam. The San Mateo 

 concrete dam in California, designed to have a height of 

 170 feet, but stopped at present at 146 feet, and a total 

 length at the higher level of 680 feet, has a bottom width 

 of 176 feet, and is arched up-stream with a radius of 637 

 feet ; and the reservoir formed by the completed dam 

 will have a capacity of 29,000 million gallons. The Ash 

 Fork steel dam, 184 feet long and 46 feet high for a central 

 60 feet, built in 1897 across Johnson canyon in Arizona, 

 is a novel type of dam, constructed with triangular steel 

 frames covered with steel plates ; but the experiment 

 has not proved satisfactory, as the steel dam leaks con- 

 siderably at its junctions with the masonry buttresses at 

 both ends, and with the concrete foundation at the base. 

 An interesting form of the failure of a masonry dam is 

 furnished by the history of the Austin dam in Te.\as, 

 illustrated by views, 1091 feet long and 6S feet high, 

 built in 1891-92 and founded on limestone rock. In ."Vpril, 

 1000, an unprecedented flood of the Colorado River 

 raised the water-level of the reservoir 11 feet above the 

 crest of the dam ; and 500 feet of the dam slid forward 

 on the foundation about 60 feet down stream, though a 

 flood in the previous summer, raising the water 9^ feet 

 above the crest, had passed down without injuring the 

 dam. Another interesting feature of this work was the 

 filling up of over two-fifths of the reservoir capacity with 

 sand and silt in four years, owing to the yearly discharge 

 of this sediment-bearing river amounting to about forty 

 times the capacity of the reservoir. 



Some earthen dams constructed in California and 

 Colorado, for forming reservoirs for irrigation, are de- 

 scribed in a short chapter. Natural reservoirs in the 

 great plains to the east of the Rocky Mountains, formed 

 by depressions collecting the storm waters from the 

 adjacent districts and devoid of an outlet, can be readily 

 utilised for irrigating arable lands at a lower elevation ; 

 and examples of such reservoirs are described in the fifth 

 chapter. The final chapter is devoted to schemes for 

 reservoirs, mainly in California, Colorado, Montana, New 

 Mexico, and Utah, and like the preceding chapter pos- 

 sesses mainly a local interest ; but the descriptions serve 

 to show what a field there is in these Western States for 

 such works, and what a large development of irrigation, 

 with its attendant benefits, may be accomplished in these 

 regions. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 The Analomy of the Cat. By Jacob Reighard and H. S. 



Jennings. Pp. xx 4- 498. (New York : H. Holt and 



Co., 1901.) 

 Yet another book upon the cat 1 With the great treatise 

 of Strauss-Durckheim, and the books of Mivart, Wilder 

 and Gorham, published, and the great work of Jayne 

 in course of publication, there would seem little room 

 left for this now before us. When, however, it is re- 

 membered that the treatise of the first-named author is 

 not available for American students ; that, like that by 

 Wilder, it deals only with parts of the animal described ; 

 that the late Dr. Alivart's book, rather a general treatise 

 on mammalian morphology than a special one upon the 



NO. 1650, VOL. 64] 



cat, fails completely in most parts where anatomical 

 detail peculiar to this animal is concerned ; that the 

 book by Messrs. Gorham and Tower, though a labora- 

 tory treatise, is but brief— it will be clear that ample 

 room is left for the work under review, which is de- 

 signedly a laboratory book, giving a complete and well- 

 balanced description of the facts of anatomy of the 

 animal concerned " in moderate volume and without 

 extraneous matter." 



There are in all 472 pp. in the book, o. which the 

 appendix of 44 pp. is wholly given to directions for 

 practical dissection. The body of the work consists of 

 brief but concise descriptions of the organic systems 

 taken in order— the skeletal, muscular, visceral, circula- 

 tory, nervous and sensory systems (the latter with the 

 integument) being in turn dealt with. Anatomical 

 characters are alone recognised ; neither those histo- 

 logical nor which concern growth stages of even the 

 bones are in any way given ; nor is there any refer- 

 ence to literature beyond brief mention of the works 

 by the aforenamed anatomists and some few others, 

 together cited in the preface. Our authors have done 

 well to consult the myological observations of Windle 

 and Parsons, but they have omitted to even record the 

 important work upon the morphology of the digestive 

 tract of the cat, by Dr. Franklin Dexter, of the Harvard 

 Medical School, which has been progressing side by side 

 with their own. 



This book is what it professes to be — a laboratory 

 treatise, clear, deliberate and clean cut, in its style and 

 method most nearly akin to the didactic laboratory 

 treatises of the late Milnes Marshall, so fully in vogue 

 by the type of student who cares only for facts. It is 

 based upon an earlier account of the anatomy of the cat, 

 designed by the senior author for class use in the Univer- 

 sity of Michigan in iSgi-92. The junior author is respon- 

 sible for its completion for publication, and the 173 text 

 illustrations, which, though clear, are in no way remarkable, 

 have been prepared under his supervision by his wife. 



The chief novelty of the book is a system of nomen- 

 clature, based upon that proposed in 1895 by the German 

 Society of Anatomists. A large section of the preface is 

 devoted to a discussion of this and cognate subjects ; the 

 use of Latin terms in their English form, and the signifi- 

 cance of topographic terms and terms of precise orienta- 

 tion, being among the more important topics discussed. 



We are informed that the notes which furnished the 

 basis of the book have been used with success in four 

 or five of the American Universities, and although 

 among English teachers, who prefer the rabbit to the 

 cat for educational work, the book will be little in 

 demand, it will be welcome beyond those upon the cat 

 hitherto in use on account of its accuracy of descriptive 

 detail and uniformity of treatment. 



Essays in Illustratio?! of the Action of Astral Gravit- 

 ation in Natural Phenomena. By William Leighton 

 Jordan, F.R.G.S., M.R.I., Assoc.Inst.C.E., F.S.S., 

 F.S.A., F.R.M.S. Pp. XV 4- 192. (London: Longmans, 

 Green and Co., 1900.) 

 When an author puts forward perfectly new views ir> 

 opposition to those generally accepted, using technical 

 terms like force and energy in several new senses, it is 

 very difficult to find out exactly what he means. In his- 

 definitions he says that gravitation resists all impressed 

 motion with a force as the square of the velocity. -He 

 defines vis inertiae as the force with which matter resists 

 motion. It is as the mass multiplied by the square of 

 the motion resisted. After defining momentum, he says 

 that it is resisted by the inertia of matter in its origin and 

 in its progress, whereas Newton's first law of motion sup- 

 poses inertia to resist its origin but to sustain its progress. 

 The author's membership of many learned societies 

 might warrant the belief that he has some meaning in 

 what he says, but it is certainly very carefully concealed. 



