JANUARY 4, 1901.] 
Pressure in Relation to the Diurnal Winds,’ 
‘A System of Fundamental Constants and 
Formule and Reduction Tables,’ ‘The Theory 
. of Cyclones and Anticyclones,’ ‘Discussion of 
the Cumulus and Cumulo-Nimbus Clouds,’ 
‘Reduction of the Pressure and Temperature 
Maps at Sea-level, 3,500-foot Level, and 10,000- 
foot Level,’ ‘The Amount of Heat that would 
Convert an Adiabatic Atmosphere into the 
State Actually Existing.’ 
The reading of this report cannot be lightly 
undertaken. Indeed, the very completeness of 
it and the elaborate mathematical discussions 
which find a place in it, will undoubtedly pre- 
vent many persons from attempting to find 
out what the volume really contains. We do 
not wish to be understood as saying that work 
of the sort that Professor Bigelow has here 
given us is unimportant, or out of place in a 
thorough study of the observations with which 
he has had to deal. Far from it. But we 
cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, that 
the observers of the Weather Bureau, both 
regular and voluntary, and the public generally, 
should have the chief results of the international 
cloud observations in this country put before 
them in a simple, compact form. We hope that 
the chief of the Weather Bureau may look at 
this matter in the same light, and may perhaps 
sanction the publication of a Weather Bureau 
Bulletin, of say 100 pages, in which the results 
of Professor Bigelow’s painstaking research, 
which are of most general interest, may be set 
forth. 
Professor Bigelow is to be congratulated on 
the completion of this report, which stands on 
a far higher plane than most of the meteoro- 
logical work published in this country. 
R. DEC. WARD. 
Plane Trigonometry. By DANIEL A. MURRAY, 
Ph.D., Instructor in Mathematics in Cornell 
University. New York, London and Bombay, 
Longmans, Green & Co. 1899. Pp. xiii + 
301. 
The author has aimed to ‘avoid the extremes 
of expansion and brevity.’ Only such topics 
are fully treated as make up the usual course 
in plane trigonometry. The thickness of the ~ 
volume is largely due to the presence of an 
SCIENCE. 
25 
appendix of historical and other notes, a long 
list of exercises for practice and review, a table 
of answers, a four-place and a five-place table 
of logarithms of numbers, a five-place table of 
logarithms of the sine, cosine, tangent and 
cotangent, a four-place table of logarithms 
(augmented) of trigonometric functions, and a 
four-place table of values of trigonometric 
functions. These components constitute little 
less than half of the book. The other and 
larger half contains an unusually full exposition 
of principles. The composition is throughout 
careful and scholarly. While acquiring a 
knowledge of the elements as here presented, 
the student can hardly fail to become aware of 
the larger aspects of the science. 
As regards arrangement and disposition of 
matter, there is, of course, always room for 
difference of opinion. Doubtless many teachers 
would for example prefer to have the notion of 
the radian introduced at an earlier stage; and 
there are not wanting reasons of some weight 
for preferring to present the general ratio defini- 
tions of the functions in connection with the 
conventional system of coordinate axes boldly 
in the beginning, instead of reserving this most 
commanding point of view, as is here done, for 
so advanced a stage as Chapter V. However, 
in things pedagogical, quot homines, tot sententiz. 
It remains to say that while paper and typog- 
raphy are good, the book deserves to be more 
substantially bound. 
C. J. KYSER. 
CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 
BOOKS RECEIVED. 
A de Bary’s Vorlesungen iiber Bakterien. Edited by 
W. Micuna. Leipzig, W. Engelmann. 1900. 
Pp. vi+186. M.4. 60 Pf. : 
Outlines of Human Phusiology. F. SCHENK and A. 
GRUBER, translated by Wm. D. ZOETHOUT with a 
preface by JACQUES LOEB. New York, Henry Holt 
& Co. 1900. Pp. viii + 339. 
Lecons de physiologie expérimentale. RAPHAEL Dvu- 
BoIs. Paris, G. Carré and C. Naud. 1900. Pp. 
vi + 380. 
SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES. 
THE Journal of the American Chemical Society 
for December contains the following articles: 
‘The Production of Alloys of Tungsten and of 
