February 27, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



123 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



Petrarch : A SketcJi of liis Life and Works. By May Alden 

 Waed. Boston, Roberts Bros. 12°. $1.35. 



A WELL-WEITTEN biography of Petrarch in English is a good 

 book to have; and Miss Ward, we think, has here supplied it. 

 Her work is of moderate dimensions, yet it gives all the infor- 

 mation about Petrarch that English readers are likely to need, and 

 it is written in a plain yet easy and flowing style. It recounts 

 the main events of the hero's life, his travels, his many friend- 

 ships, his multifarious occupations, and his popularity, while at 

 the same time keeping always in view the intellectual work for 

 which posterity honors him. His personal character is made 

 known to us by his letters and other works, and especially by 

 his " Letter to Posterity," which is really an autobiography; and 

 as thus revealed to our view he appears as an extraordinarily 

 active, agreeable, and popular, but somewhat vain man, imbued 

 with an intense passion for antiquity and for the political unifica- 

 tion of Italy. Miss Ward, while evincing much admiration for 

 Petrarch's sonnets, thinks, nevertheless, that his real life-work — 

 ' ' one of far more importance and far wider influence than any of 

 his writings, whether Latin or Italian — was the opening of the 

 gates of antiquity to the modern world." This seems to us per- 

 fectly just. Sonnets, we apprehend, have little interest for 

 intellectual men at the present day, and will have still less in the 

 years to come; but the men who led the way in reviewing the 

 Greco-Roman civilization can never cease to be important in the 

 history of human progress. That Petrarch was one of the fore- 

 most of these as well as one of the earliest, is what gives him his 

 chief claim on our gratitude; and all who are interested in the 

 stoi-y of that great awakening will find much pleasant reading 

 and food for reflection in Miss Ward's little book. 



AMONG THE PUBLISHERS. 



The observations made at the Blue Hill Meteorological Obser- 

 vatory, and the investigations of the New England Meteorological 

 Society, are now published in the " Annals of the Harvard College 

 Astronomical Observatory." The Blue Hill observations for 1889 

 include the continuation of the tabular records of previous years, 

 with monthly and annual summaries of hourly values, with an 

 introduction by Mr. Rotch. The record is discussed and published 

 with exceptional fulness. The cloud observations carried on by 

 Mr. Clayton are published in detail, and present a mass of fact 

 from whose reduction we shall expect to see very interesting and 

 novel results. Considering that cloud-movement is much more 

 steady than the movement of surface wind, it is singular that in- 

 strumental means, such as are here employed for determining the 

 direction and relative velocity of cloud-di-ift, have not been more 

 generally introduced. They might at least be introduced at a 

 number of signal-service stations in different parts of the country, 

 in order to test the possibility of their use in storm prediction; for 

 the methods of weather forecasting now in use cannot be regarded 

 as satisfactory. A feature of the Blue Hill station is the relative 

 small and irregular diurnal variation of the various weather 

 elements : even the mean hourly temperature ranged only from 

 43° to 52.5°. The wind velocity, cloudiness, and rainfall are 

 almost independent of the time of day. AU these factors are, 

 however, well known to be dependent closely on the position of 

 passing cyclonic storms; and if referred to these controlling dis- 

 turbances, instead of to the relatively unimportant changes from 

 day to night, the natural variations of wind, cloud, and rain 

 would undoubtedly stand forth in their true distinctness. 



— The " Ninth Annual Report of the Director of the United 

 States Geological Survey " is of somewhat less size than its two- 

 volume predecessor, but is fully up to the average of the earlier 

 seven volumes. Besides the administrative reports of the first 

 two hundred pages, it contains an account of the Charleston earth- 

 quake of 1886, by Capt. C. E. Dutton; the geology of Cape Ann, 

 by Professor N. S. Shaler; an explanation of the formation of 

 travertine and silicious sinter in the hot-springs of the Yellow- 

 stone National Park, by W. H. Weed; and an essay on the 

 geology and physiography of parts of Colorado, Utah, and 



Wyoming, by Dr. C. A. White. Capt. Dutton's report is full 

 of interest. The accounts of the earthquake and its effects, as 

 presented in his memoir, will at once become the standard classic 

 for this country, and the illustrations of damaged buildings will 

 furnish material for all the new geographies and geologies for many 

 years to come. The depth of the earthquake focus is placed at 

 twelve miles, with a probable error of two miles. The velocity of the 

 wave is determined to be about three miles a second, decidedly 

 greater than has been found in other shocks ; but, as the deter- 

 mination is based on good observations, the author is disposed to 

 give it great weight, and to discard earlier results. Mr. Weed's 

 essay on the travertine and silicious deposits of the hot-springs of 

 the Yellowstone Park brings to light a process heretofore little 

 suspected. The terraced formations of the springs are found to 

 have been formed in great part by the agency of a low form of 

 algous vegetation. He concludes that the plant life of the Mam- 

 moth Hot Springs causes the deposition of travertine, and is a 

 very important agent in the formation of such deposits; that the 

 vegetation of the hot alkaline waters of the geyser basins elimi- 

 nates silica from the water by its vital growth, and produces de- 

 posits of silicious sinter; and that the thickness and extent of 

 such deposits prove the importance of such vegetation as a geo- 

 logical agent. 



— John Wiley, one of the oldest publishers in the United 

 States, and well known among scientific men as the founder and 

 head of the publishing-house of John Wiley & Sons, which has 

 brought out so many engineering and scientific books in this 

 country, died at his home in East Orange, Feb. 21. Mr. WUey was 

 born in Flatbush, L.I., Oct. 4, 1808, but his parents removed 

 shortly after to New York. At seventeen he entered his father's 

 store, the firm then being Wiley, Lane, & Co. Later, upon the 

 death of his father, he succeeded to the business, G. P. Putnam 

 being his partner at the time. Charles Wiley, his son, was ad- 

 mitted to the firm about forty years ago ; and later WUliam H. 

 Wiley, well known among engineers, was also admitted, the firm 

 name being changed to John Wiley & Sons. For nearly fifty 

 years the office was in the old Mercantile Library building, 

 recently demolished. Mr. Wiley was married in 1833 to Elizabeth 

 S. Osgood. They had five children, — three sons and two daugh- 

 ters. Mr. Wiley was one of the original founders of the Church 

 of the Puritans, this city, of which the Rev. Dr. Cheever was the 

 pastor for so many years. He was an active member of the Ameri- 

 can Home Missionary Society, and for many years its president. 

 He was also an active member of the Congregational Union of 

 New York. He removed to East Orange in 1851. 



— G. P. Putnam's Sons have in preparation " The Life and 

 Writings of George Mason of Virginia," in the Early Statesmen 

 Series; " Chapters on Banking," by Professor Dunbar of Harvard, 

 and ''The Industrial and Commercial Supremacy of England," by 

 the late Thorold Rogers, in the Economic Monographs; and 

 " Drinking- Water and Ice-Supplies," in Dr. Prudden's Health 

 Manuals. 



— The long-delayed Monograph I. of the Geological Survey on 

 Lake Bonneville, an extinct lake of the Utah basin, by G. K. 

 Gilbert, is at last published. The general character of the history 

 of this ancient lake was given by the same author a number of 

 years ago in the " Second Annual Report " of the survey ; and in 

 a later report there was an essay by him on the topographic 

 features of lake shores, now reprinted, with little change, as con- 

 stituting an element in the discussion of the Utah basin. As 

 now presented, the entire essay is a model of elaborate and delib- 

 erate discussion. Taking the present monograph with the one on 

 Lahontan by Russell, who was associated with Gilbert in the 

 study of the Great Basin, it may be safely said that no other area 

 of interior drainage in the world has received so complete an ex- 

 amination, nor has yielded results of such wide importance. The 

 sensitiveness of interior lakes to variations in the relation of rainfall 

 to evaporation renders them of the highest value as indicators of 

 climatic changes in the past. With this point in mind, the inter- 

 pretation of their deposits discloses the existence of two moist 

 periods, with an interval of dryness; and these are correlated 

 with the two glacial and the single interglacial epoch, not only by 



