24 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 27. 



myths and folk-tales which are found in 

 tribes and nations -nddely asunder in time 

 and place, and points out the traits which 

 he believes to be original, and those he con- 

 siders assignable to contact. The majority 

 of them are either American or represented 

 in America. The longest, 135 pages, is that 

 which he calls ' Lucina sine concubitu,' i. e., 

 the Myth of the Virgin-Mother. As he 

 shows, this is a very common tale repeated 

 with slight variations in the ISTew and Old 

 World. Another of special interest is that 

 of the subterranean origin of the human 

 species, which is connected with the flood- 

 myth and various cosmogonical legends. 

 Other chapters are devoted to ' The Origin 

 of the Sun,' 'Dog-Men,' 'The Mji;h of 

 Psyche in America,' ' The Discovery of 

 Maize,' ' The Name of the Metals in the 

 Languages of Mexico,' etc. 



The learning of the author is everywhere 

 manifest and also his familiarity with orig- 

 inal sources and native languages ; but to 

 one who believes in the modern anthropo- 

 logic school of folk-lore his constant eftbrt 

 to trace connection and dependence between 

 myths of distant nations will prove disap- 

 pointing. He is a firm believer in the fan- 

 ciful theories about early American culture 

 advanced by the late M. Leonce Angrand, 

 who maintained there were two currents of 

 civilization, one the ' Floridian or eastern 

 Toltecs,' the other the 'western Toltecs'; 

 the former from southern, the latter from 

 central or northern Asia. No tenable ar- 

 guments support this hypothesis, and its in- 

 troductioii into a work of original research, 

 such as this, is a misfortune. 



Professor Fortier's volume is the second 

 of the ' Memoirs of the American Folk-lore 

 Society.' It consists of fourteen animal 

 tales, twelve fairy tales or march en, and an 

 appendix of fourteen short stories in Eng- 

 lish only. Some brief notes accompany the 

 text, mentioning the source or informant. 

 Most of the tales can readily be traced to 



European originals, which have become 

 modified by the local surroundings. The 

 few exceptions to this are possibly African, 

 but the negroes in the United States seem 

 to have lost early and completely both 

 their language and folk-lore. The volume 

 is also valuable for its examples of the true 

 Creole dialect. This is now disappearing, 

 and Professor Fortier found it no easy mat- 

 ter to obtain these narratives, the j'ounger 

 generation knowing nothing of them and 

 the older being desirous of forgetting them. 

 The translation is generally very satis- 

 factory ; though in such renderings as 

 ' alors pove fiUe la di,' by, ' the young 

 lady said to herself,' greater simplicity 

 would have been preferable. 



D. G. Bkinton. 



The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Peo- 

 FESSOE Olivee J. LoDGE, Proceedings, 

 Liverpool Engineering Society, Decem- 

 ber, 1894, twenty-first session, with dis- 

 cussion. 



Professor Lodge, in this discussion, be- 

 gins with the statement that the Second 

 Law of Thermodynamics asserts that the 

 proportion, range of temperature worked 

 through by a heat engine divided by initial 

 maximum, absolute temperature, represents 

 the largest proportion of the heat present 

 in the working substance in any cycle of 

 thermodynamic action which can be, by any 

 means, converted from the thermal form of 

 energy to the mechanical or dynamic, and 

 proceeds to show that " the second law of 

 thermodynamics is, after all, nothing more 

 than enlightened common sense." The de- 

 duction is immediate and obvious that the 

 higher the temperature the greater the 

 availability of the heat, and the larger the 

 proportion which may be converted into the 

 other form of energy in any thermodynamic 

 cycle. The drop of temperature between 

 firebox and boiler, for example, means an 

 absolute loss of availability of heat, in the 



