558 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 825 



style and seem to reproduce the spirit of the 

 original as well as could be expected of narra- 

 tives not based directly on Indian texts. The 

 practise adopted by Mr. Merriam, as before 

 him by Curtin, of speaking of the animal, or 

 better, pre-animal, characters by their Indian 

 names instead of by the English translations of 

 these names is hardly to be commended. 

 ISTothing is gained thereby. The Indian names 

 are not really proper nouns, but merely the 

 ordinary words for the animals referred to, so 

 that their use not only taxes the memory of 

 the reader, but, to some extent, gives him a 

 mistaken idea of the character of the mythol- 

 ogy. Yet it would be mere carping to dwell 

 on so small a matter. It is to be hoped that 

 this contribution to California folk-lore will 

 be followed by others from the' pen of Mr. 

 Merriam. ' Edward Sapir 



Geological Survet, 

 Ottawa, Ontario 



The Simple Carbohydrates and the Gluco- 

 sides. By E. Frankland Armstrong, D.Sc, 

 Ph.D., Associate of the City and Guilds of 

 London Institute. Pp. ix + 112. New 

 York, Longmans, Green and Co. 1910. 

 This monograph, one of the series on Bio- 

 chemistry, edited by R. H. Aders Plimmer 

 and F. G. Hopkins, presents an up-to-date 

 summary of the chemistry of the subject, par- 

 ticular emphasis being placed upon those 

 carbohydrates which have a biochemical sig- 

 nificance. It would be a matter of no little 

 labor for a physiologist to acquire from the 

 scattered literature a conception of the pres- 

 ent status of the subject comparable in any 

 degree with Dr. Armstrong's excellent re- 

 view. As an illustration of the interesting 

 incidental suggestions which have been intro- 

 duced appropriately, the following paragraph 

 may be quoted : 



From the biological point of view, the fact that 

 glucose exists in solution not as a single substance 

 but as an equilibrated mixture of stereoisomerie 

 7-oxidie forms, readily convertible into one an- 

 other, is of fundamental and far-reaching impor- 

 tance. If one of the stereoismerides is preferably 

 metabolized in the plant or animal, in the course 



of either synthetic or analytic processes, the pos- 

 sibility of controlling the equilibrium in the one 

 or other direction, so as to increase or limit the 

 supply of this form, places a very delicate di- 

 rective mechanism at the disposal of the organism. 

 Tliis question is undoubtedly one which demands 

 the close attention of physiologists (p. 20). 



The recent views regarding the structure 

 of sugars are introduced in a way that is log- 

 ical rather than dogmatic, and without re- 

 hearsing all the details of the evidence bearing 

 on the points involved. The mono- and disac- 

 charides are considered at some length, glu- 

 cose being selected as the typical sugar for 

 discussion. There are further included chap- 

 ters on The Relation between Configuration 

 and Properties, Hydrolysis and Synthesis, and 

 The Natural and Synthetic Glucosides. The 

 attempt of the author to present the subject 

 by a stimulating method has resulted in a 

 commendable success. A useful bibliography 

 of 17 pages is appended. 



Lafayette B. Mendel 



Sheffield Scientific School of 

 Yale University 



Miner alogie de la France ei de ses Colonies. 



Tome Quatrieme, P partie. A. Lacroix. 



Librarie Polytechnique, Ch. Beranger, Edi- 



teur. Paris, Rue des Saints-Peres, 15. 



1910. 



The fourth and last volume of Lacroix's 

 " Mineralogie de la France " is now being 

 published, the first part having just appeared 

 and the second, or final part, being promised 

 before the year is out. The second part of the 

 third volume, which appeared in 1909, was re- 

 viewed in Science, Vol. 32, No. 816, August 

 19. The present part starts in with the man- 

 ganites and plumbites, braunite, hausmannite 

 and minium. Under the psilomelane group, 

 romanechite is described as a distinct spe- 

 cies with the formula H,(Mn, Ba)Mn30g or 

 (Mn, Ba)0-3MnO,-f H,0. It is near hol- 

 landite in composition, but differs from it in 

 that hollandite is much richer in iron, and has 

 all the H replaced by metals. Romanechite 

 forms compact or concretionary masses with 

 fibrous structure. Psilomelane is described 



