November 13, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



277 



a3 well as from those of Rev. M. Henderson, of Rev. W. Grune- 

 wald, and of three Prussian delegates sent to Nicaragua before 

 1845. Mr. Lucien Adam has made a through investigation of 

 this tongue. His " Langue Moskito " has just been published 

 by J. Maisonneuve, 35 Quai Voltaire, Paris, and forms the four- 

 teenth volume of his " Bibliotheque linguistique Americaine " 

 (134 pp., 8°). The texts include a number of stories from the 

 New and Old Testament and some hymns, the ten command- 

 ments and two love songs, all with a French translation. The 

 vocabulary fills thirty pages and the grammatic sketch contains 

 the full paradigms of several verbs, which inflect by person- 

 sufiSxes and possess a negative form. The phonetic side of the 

 idiom may be characterized as rather vocalic than consonantic and 

 the vowels a, i, u, largely exceed in frequency the other vowels. 



— A novelty in calendars is the '• Slide-Rule Perpetual Calen- 

 dar," recently issued by the Jerome-Thomas Company of this city. 

 As its name indicates, it is an application of the well-known slide- 

 rule principle to a perpetual calendar, by means of a table of year- 

 letters extending from the first year of the Christian era to the 

 year 2800 (with means of infinite extension). 



— The pictures of outdoor life in Canada presented in "Lady 

 Dufferin's Journal " will interest many readers. Lady Duflferin 

 gives a description of the various social and civic functions in 

 which she took part with the Governor-General, and she also de- 

 scribes her salmon-fishing and camping trips. "Lady Dufferin's 

 Journal " is published by D. Appleton & Co. 



— Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. announce " Colonial Furniture of 

 New England," a study of the domestic furniture in use in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by Irving Whitall Lyon, 

 M.D., member of the Connecticut Historical Society, illustrated 

 ■with about one hundred large heliotypes; also the twelfth volume 

 of the Oentleman's Magazine Library, comprising the articles on 

 "English Topography," edited by G. L. Gomme. 



— Another volume of Mr. Lowell's essays is said to be in the 

 hands of his executor. Professor Norton, and will shortly be jjub- 

 lished. It will include Lowell's papers on Milton, Gray, and Lan- 

 der; his sketch of Keats prefacing poems of Keats in the " British 

 Poets"; his paper on Izaak Walton, printed as an introduction to 

 the recent edition of " The Complete Angler,"' and an address be- 

 fore the Modern Language Association. 



— Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. will publish next month 

 Mr. W. J. Henderson's new book, "Preludes and Studies; Musi- 

 cal Themes of the Day." The volume will contain a discussion of 

 that fruitful theme, Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen," together 

 with other interesting Wagnerian essays. Perhaps the most val- 

 uable feature of the book for students and lovers of music in gen- 

 eral will be the essay on " The Evolution of Piano Music," which 

 includes a mass of facts not before accessible from any one source, 

 and most of which are not to be found in any other work in Eng- 

 lish. The study of Schumann's symphonic writing will appeal to 

 all readers who look below the surface of music. 



— An account of " The Rise of the Pottery Industry," by Edwin 

 A. Barber, is to appear in the December Popular Science Monthly. 

 It will be illustrated with figures of early American ware, the 

 apparatus used in making it, etc. This is the tenth article in the 

 Monthly's illustrated series on American industries. Volcanoes 

 in Connecticut are what very few persons would expect to find, 

 but Prof. W. M. Davis has found a place near Meriden where 

 they have been, and will describe his discoveries in an illustrated 

 article. The fourth and last of Prof. Frederick Starr's papers on 

 " Dress and Adornment " will also appear. It deals with "Re- 

 ligious Dress," including the dress of religious officers, of wor- 

 shippers, of victims, of mourners, amulets and charms, and the 

 religious meaning of mutilations. It will be illustrated. An 

 iavention that bids fair to work a revolution in printing, namely, 

 type-casting machines, will be described by P. D. Ross. A cut of 

 each of the two forms will be given. These machines are used 

 by several of the largest newspapers in the United States, and 

 have been ordered for a number of others. The principles in- 



volved in "The Training of Dogs" will be given by Dr. Wes- 

 ley Mills. The article will contain pictures of a number of 

 champion hunting-dogs. 



— The History Company, San Francisco, Cal., have just issued 

 another volume of H. H. Bancroft's series of "Chronicles of the 

 Builders of the Commonwealth." Instead of following the publi- 

 cation of Vol. I. of this work vv'ith Vols. II., III., and TV., the 

 publishers skip for the time being to Vol. V., the intervening vol- 

 umes being nearly ready and to follow at short intervals. In the 

 framework of Vol. V., the subject of which is "Routes and Trans- 

 portation," there is much original matter. The material is drawn 

 from innumerable original sources never before put into print. It 

 covers the entire groundwork of inland and oceanic navigation, 

 stage lines, telegraphic lines, and railway lines, the evolution of 

 the express business, and everything connected with the subject 

 in the fullest detail and in the most interesting style. 



— One of the largest book deals ever consummated in America, 

 it is reported, was closed Oct. 27 by cablegram, the University of 

 Chicago being the purchaser and S. Simon of Berlin, the seller. 

 The library contains 380,000 volumes and 120,000 dissertations in 

 all languages. Among them there are 200 manuscripts from the 

 eighth to the nineteenth century, 1,600 volumes of paleography, 

 15,000 journals, academies, and periodicals, 65,000 volumes of 

 Greek and Roman archaeology, 65,000 Greek and Roman classics, 

 3,400 volumes Greek and Latin authors of modern times, 3,000 

 Greek and Roman philology and grammar, 2,000 volumes general 

 linguistics, 3,000 volumes modern linguistics, 3,500 volumes his- 

 tory, 1,000 illustrated works of art, 5,000 volumes physics, astron- 

 omy, and mathematics, and 5,000 volumes natural history. 



— We have received from C. W. Bardeen of Syracuse a little 

 pamphlet entitled " Thoughts from Earnest Women," arranged by 

 the Women's Literary Club of Dunkirk. It consists of brief ex- 

 tracts, mostly in prose, from a large number of women writers of 

 various times and countries, and is a collection of considerable 

 merit. Most of the extracts relate to the conduct of life, some 

 being moral, others ijrudential, and they indicate for the most part 

 good sense both in the authors and in the compilers. The com- 

 pilers are in favor of widening woman's sphere of work and of 

 influence, and do not believe that she ought to confine herself ex- 

 clusively to her family ; and several of the authors quoted are 

 advocates of woman suffrage. The interest of the collection, how- 

 ever, is by no means confined to women readers, bi:t most of the 

 extracts are as interesting and instructive to men as to women. 

 The pamphlet is well worth the fifteen cents that it costs. l^Ir. 

 Bardeen also sends us a work on " Elementary English," bj- John 

 D. Wilson, prepared with reference to the Regents' examinations 

 in the State of New York; but we cannot say that the work is well 

 fitted for its purpose. The Regents issued in April last a bulletin 

 in which thej sketched a course of study in the elements of Eng- 

 lish, and this bo jk has evidently been hastily gotten up to meet 

 the Regents' requirements. The definitions are altogether too 

 brief and too abstract, with very few illustrative examples; and 

 the rules of punctuation are iusuSicient, and not illustrated by any 

 examples at all. Moreover, there are some grammatical blunders 

 in the book, as, for instance, in the first paragraph, where we read 

 that "the word or words which makes the assertion is the predi- 

 cate.'' When two subjects are connected by or, the verb ought to 

 agree with the one that stands the nearest, and therefore the above 

 sentence ought to have read thus: the word or words which malce 

 the assertion are the predicate. The book may be of some use to 

 teachers as a synopsis of its subject, but it is of no value to stu- 

 dents. 



— Whittaker & Co., London, has just issued " Light'" in the 

 " Whittaker Library of Popular Science." This book is by Sir 

 Henry Trueman Wood, Secretary of the Loudon Society of Arts, 

 who makes no pretence of being a specialist in the department of 

 physics of which he %vrites, but he clainrs a thorough familiarity 

 with the difflculties which beset the path of those humble students 

 of science who can devote their leisure only, not their working 

 Ufe, to their favorite pursuit. This perhaps indicates, as well as 



