12 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 413 



" direct fire." The author of the book, Capt. Ingalls of the First 

 Regiment United States Artillery, instructor of ballistics at the 

 United States Artillery School, has ah-eady given to the public two 

 works on the same subject, — "Exterior Ballistics," and "Ballistic 

 Machines." This work was prepared while the author was en- 

 gaged in teaching ballistics to student officers at the artillery 

 school at Fort Monroe, and most of the examples are such as were 

 given out from time to time to classes under his instruction, as 

 exercises in ballastic formulae. It will prove to be of permanent 

 value, not only to the particular branch of the service for which 

 it was intended, but also for other branches, both regular and 

 militia. The most important of the examples may be worked out 

 with a very slight knowledge of mathematics, arithmetic and a 

 little algrebra being sufflcieht for many of them. 



AMONG THE PUBLISHERS. 



In Lipxnncotfs Magazine for January, 1891, we note "The 

 State of Washington," an article by Major Moses P. Handy, which 

 will surprise the many who know little of this section of the coun- 

 try; and "The Road Movement," an article by Lewis M. Haupt, 

 C.E., which contains some suggestions for the much-needed im- 

 provement of public roads. 



— Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. announce a new edition of 

 Mr. Lowell's " Fable for Critics " This poem, in which all the 

 prominent American authors of the period at which it was writ- 

 ten are reviewed with keen appreciation mingled with good-na- 

 tured banter, Mr. Lowell composed when he was under thirty 

 years of age. " This jew d'esprit" says Mr. Lowell in a prefatory 

 note, " was extemporized, I may fairly say, so rapidly was it writ- 

 ten, purely for my own amusement, and with no thought of pub- 

 lication. I sent daily instalments of it to a friend in New Yoi'k, 

 the late Charles F. Briggs. He urged me to let it be printed, and 

 I at last consented to its anonymous publication. The secret was 



kept till after several persons had laid claim to its authorship." 

 There are twenty-six authors mentioned in the poem, and the 

 publishers have made the book more interesting by securing por- 

 traits of each of these writers, taken about the time the original 

 edition was published. These are reproduced in outline, and are 

 inserted in the text at the point where each author is mentioned. 

 A list of the authors aUuded to is also given for the first time, so 

 that the surmises to which the fable has always given rise will at 

 last be set at rest. 



— The first number of The Bacteriological World, edited by P. 

 Paquin, M.D., Columbia, Mo., has appeared. 



— A paper on the " Echinoderms from the Northern Coast of 

 Yucatan and the Harbor of Vera Cruz," by J. E. Ives, assistant 

 to the curator in charge of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, is published in the " Proceedings of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of Philadelphia," Sept. 30, 1890. The EcUno- 

 dermata which form the subject of this paper were collected on 

 the northern coast of Tucatan and at Vera Cruz, in the spring of 

 the present year, by an expedition from the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia to investigate the natural history of 

 Yucatan and Mexico. The results in this department are inter- 

 esting. One new genus and three new species are described, a 

 little-known species is figured for the first time, the synonymy of 

 this species and of some others has been studied with profitable 

 results, and the majority of the species collected supply new 

 localities which form connecting points between the northern and 

 southern portions of the great West Indian, or eastern tropical 

 American littoral fauna. The northern coast of Yucatan pos- 

 sesses a sandy beach largely made up of shell fragments. The 

 water off the coast is very shallow, the ten-fathom line being 

 twenty miles from the shore, and the hundred-fathom line about 

 one hundred and fifty mUes. Three miles off the shore in the neigh- 

 borhood of Progreso, the bottom is of a sandy character, although 



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