:2o6 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 346 



•chology appear to have only a remote bearing upon the business of 

 teaching. The same firm publishes Sept. 20, " Sept Grand Au- 

 'teurs du XIXe Sifecle : Lamartine, Hugo, de Vigny, de Musset, 

 Theophile Gautier, Merimee, Coppee, An Introduction to Nine- 

 teenth Century French Literature," by Alcee Fortier, professor of 

 "French, Tulane' University of Louisiana. This book consists of a 

 ■series of lectures, written for students, and forms a superior French 

 reader, giving an account of the lives and writings of seven great 

 French authors. 



— The Neiu Eiigland Magazine, an illustrated monthly, will be 

 published at once in Boston, under the control of Dr. E. E. Hale 

 and Edwin D. Mead. While largely devoted to the past of New 

 England, the articles will not be confined to local topics. Short 

 biographies of Parnell and Gladstone, papers on the French settle- 

 ments in America, remarkable cities in New England, and fiction 

 in prose and verse, are among the attractions promised during the 

 first year. 



— Joseph Thomson, who made the remarkable journey across 

 Masai-land, in Africa, says in Scribner's for October : " It is my 

 belief that if Stanley had taken this route [across Masai-land] 

 those disastrous losses in men and goods which befell him would 

 have been avoided, work would have been done in half the time, 

 and a practicable route would have been opened, — an all-impor- 

 tant work still to be done, and which must yet be done if the great 

 work commenced by Sir Samuel Baker^ carried on by Gen. Gordon, 

 and solidified and extended by Emin Pacha, is not to be sacrificed, 

 and the people once more given up to all the horrors of the slave 

 trade." In the same number Professor N. S. Shaler of Harvard, 

 after a careful consideration of the much neglected condition of the 

 ■common roads in this country, makes the following suggestions : 

 " I would in the first place suggest that in the Federal Department 

 •of Agriculture there should be a commissioner of roads, having at 

 his command sufficient means to prepare and print as public docu- 

 ments accounts of the condition of roadways in this country, with 

 essays on the method of their construction. Each State should 

 'likewise have a commissioner of public ways, whose duty should 

 be to advance education in this class of questions in every possible 

 manner. To him the town and county road commissioners should 

 be required to report. He should cause to be constructed a map 

 •showing the location and condition of all the roadways in the State. 

 These ways he should classify as regards their condition. Our 

 -country folk wallow in the mire of their ways, pay excessive tolls, 



■ endure, in a word, a grinding taxation, generation after generation, 

 without appreciating the burden which rests upon them." Pro- 

 fessor Charles Sprague Smith of Columbia College will give, in 

 the same number of the magazine, the result of his observations 



•on the present condition of the Icelanders. He made an interest- 

 ing journey to Iceland in the summer of 1888, during which time 



.he resided with the dean of a diocese near Reykjavik, and made 

 with him an interesting journey into the interior of the island. 



^ The PoliticaL Science Quarterly for September has an article 

 -on "Italian Immigration," which is of some importance at the 

 present time. The author, Eugene Schuyler, has resided in Italy 

 for three years past, and speaks from some personal acquaintance 

 with the Italian people. The emigrants from Italy in 1888 num- 

 bered nearly two hundred thousand, of whom a large proportion 



■ came to the United States. Mr. Schuyler discusses the causes of 

 the emigration, the chief of which is the difficulty of getting a liv- 

 ing, and as to the character of the emigrants themselves expresses 

 himself favorably. He admits that they are very illiterate, but 

 thinks that they will prove a thrifty class and of good morals too. 

 Another paper of some importance is by W. T. Moppin on " Farm 

 Mortgages and the Small Farmer." Some writers, noticing the 

 increase in farm mortgages in this country, have expressed the 

 fear that the land was passing out of the hands of the small pro- 

 prietors, who would eventually become an extinct class. Mr. Mop- 

 pin combats this view, maintaining that the debts are incurred in 

 order to make improvements on the farms or to stock new farms, 

 and that they are in the end beneficial to the farmers. Mr. Clar- 



•ence Deming treats of " Town Rule in Connecticut," showing the 

 inequalities of representation in the legislature, the little town of 

 'Union, for instance, with only 118 voters, having as many repre- 



sentatives as New Haven with nearly 18,000 voters. Besides these 

 articles the Quarterly has the first instalment of an essay on " Eng- 

 lish Legal History," treating of the methods and materials of such 

 history, and articles on "James E. Thorold Rogers," by W. J. 

 Ashley, and on "Railroad Indemnity Lands," by Fred. Perry Powers. 



— Ginn & Co. announce for publication " The Method of Least 

 Squares," by G. C. Comstock, professor of astronomy in the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin, and director of the Washburn Observatory. 

 This work contains a presentation of the methods of treating ob- 

 served numerical data wWch are in use among astronomers, physi- 

 cists, and engineers. It has been written for the student, and pre- 

 supposes only such mathematical attainments as are usually pos- 

 sessed by those who have completed the first two years of the 

 curriculum of any of our better schools of science or engineering. 

 The principle of least squares is derived from the observed distri- 

 bution of residuals in certain typical series of observations, and 

 not from an assumed law of the causes of error, thus diminishing 

 the mathematical difficulties usually encountered at the threshold 

 of the subject. Especial care has been taken to apply all of the 

 leading principles of the method to numerical data selected from 

 published observations, and to give the computations in full, so 

 that they may serve the inexperienced computer as models. It 

 has been the author's purpose to so present the subject that a 

 working knowledge of the method based upon an appreciation of 

 its principles may be acquired with a moderate expenditure of time 

 and labor. 



— A book that is sure of a sympathetic audience is " Dante Ga- 

 briel Rossetti as Designer and Writer," by his brother William M. 

 Rossetti, including a prose paraphrase of " The House of Life,"' 

 which Cassell & Co. announce. The present is the only volume 

 that William M. Rossetti has issued regarding his famous brother, 

 though he has kept his memory green by several contributions to 

 the magazines, one of them on the "Portraits of Rossetti," pub- 

 lished in the Magazine of Art. In this volume the author has not 

 attempted to write a biographical or critical account of Dante Ros- 

 setti. " Mine is a book of memoranda and of details," he says. A 

 portrait of the poet at the age of thirty-five accompanies the book. 



— On Saturday, Aug. 17, President Carnot received at a private 

 audience in the Palais de I'Elysee, Paris, Dr. R. H. Thurston, 

 director of Sibly College, Cornell University. Dr. Thurston has 

 made a translation into English of the celebrated work of Sadi- 

 Carnot, the great-uncle of the president, " Reflexions sur la Puis- 

 sance Motrice du Feu," — a work which had never before been 

 translated into English, but which has become famous throughout 

 the world as the basis of the whole structure of the modern sci- 

 ence of thermodynamics. Ptiblished in 1824, it was comparatively 

 unknown, until Sir William Thomson, the distinguished British 

 savant, called attention to its enormous importance ; and its author 

 has thus become famous as the greatest genius which has appeared 

 in that department of science during the nineteenth century. The 

 president of the republic kindly consented that Dr. Thurston 

 should dedicate to him his translation of this great work. The 

 following is the very elegant phraseology which Dr. Thurston pro- 

 poses to give to this dedication : " Dedicated to Sadi-Carnot, 

 president of the French Republic, that distinguished member of 

 the engineering profession whose whole life has been an honor to 

 the profession and to his country, and who, elevated to the highest 

 office within the gift of the French nation, has proven, by the quiet 

 dignity and the efficiency with which he has performed his august 

 duties, that he is a worthy member of his own noble family, already 

 rendered famous by an earlier Sadi-Carnot, now immortal in the 

 annals of science, and has shown himself deserving of enrolment 

 in the list of great men, which includes that other distinguished 

 engineer, our own first President, George Washington." 



— Retail grocers, and other retail dealers doing a credit busi- 

 ness, are adopting a plan that is at once novel and decidedly use- 

 ful. They issue to their customers coupon books similar to mile- 

 age books for railways, but instead of the coupons being for one 

 mile, they are for one cent each ; the value of the books varying 

 from two to twenty dollars. These coupons are good for their 

 face value in groceries or other merchandise at the store of the 

 firm issuing them. When the books are issued, the dealer charges 



