26o 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 322 



SCIENCE 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES, 



PUBLISHED BY 



N. D. C. HODGES, 



47 Lafayette Place, New York. 



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Communications will be welcomed from any quarter. Rejected manuscripts will be 

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NEW YORK, April 5, 18 



No. 322. 



■Crude Petroleum as a Fuel 249 



The Electric Coal-Digger 250 



A Unique Electric Power Station 251 



A Cotton Fabric 251 



The Electric Railway in St. Jo- 

 seph, Mo 252 



A New Form of Self Induction 

 AND Regulating Coil 



Elihu Thomson 252 



West Indian Hurricanes 254 



Colonization of Lower California 255 

 Health Matters. 



The Use of Tobacco 256 



Diphtheria 257 



■Normal Microbes in the Human 



Stomach 258 



-Anatomical and Physiological Mem- 

 oranda 258 



;Lime-Burners Free from Consump- 

 tion . 258 



Australian Rabbit-Pest 258 



Rheumatism 258 



CONTENTS: 



Electrical News, 

 The Discharge of 



Leyden Jar.... 258 



A New Alloy 259 



A Series Electric Tramway in Eng- 

 land 259 



The Price of Copper 259 



Notes and News 259 



Editorial 260 



The Decline of Book-Buying. 

 Aluminium and its Manufacture 



BY THE DeVILLE-CaSTNER PRO- 

 CESS 260 



Book-Reviews. 



Suggestive Therapeutics 265 



Natural Inheritance 266 



Among the Publishers .. 267 



Letters to the Editor. 

 The Robinson Anemometer 



H. A . Haxen 268 

 An Earthquake in Pennsylvania 



J. E. Kershner 268 

 Shall We Teach Geology ? 



Et A . Strong 269 

 Curves of Literary Style M. 269 



The ISSUE OF the Publishers' Weekly for March 30 contains 

 the spring announcements of American publishing-houses. This 

 list shows comparatively few books of importance, — a fact very 

 ■likely due to the tendency, on the part of the trade, to put off their 

 -Tjest things and postpone their best efforts until fall. This has 

 • come about through the custom, at present prevailing in this coun- 

 try, of buying books only through one or two months in the year, 

 which has led to a considerable demoralization of the trade of 

 book-making. There are now in America sixty millions of people, 

 lusing one language, the most of them able to read, and, on the 

 average, more able to buy books than the people of any other coun- 

 try. The trade in reading-matter is certainly enormous, but it is 

 largely confined to newspapers and periodicals ; the newspapers 

 especially growing bigger and bigger, until their Sunday issues 

 supply for three or four cents more than a day's reading. For the 

 time being they monopolize a great part of the reading-time of Uie 

 week, and lessen in this manner the time available for books. Yet, 

 taking all this into consideration, and remembering that in the 

 thirty years since 1859 our population has more than doubled, and 

 the proportion of illiteracy has decreased, there ought to be a great 

 demand still left for books. There are certainly a large number 

 of cheap editions supplied through the dry-goods dealers and sim- 

 ilar channels of distribution ; but it remains that the book-market 

 is not of as high a class as was that of a generation ago. Just before 



the war several of the existing houses and the predecessors of exist- 

 ing houses in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, were almost at 

 the culmination of their prosperity ; and, besides these, there were 

 a number of other publishing-houses of note or respectability whose 

 names are honorable in the history of literature. It would be diffi- 

 cult to find now any publisher who would undertake at his own 

 risk the issue of the many standard series of books which were so 

 creditable to American book-production of thirty years back. 



Publishers find in the present state of American literature little 

 to encourage them ; authors find in the present state of American 

 literature little to encourage them. The largest houses are un- 

 willing to take the risks which a generation ago their fathers in the 

 business would have taken. The retailers of books have certainly 

 not increased in number, and have apparently decreased. Take, 

 for instance, the city of Salem, Mass., the home of Hawthorne, 

 Prescott, Bowditch, and of many others who have made American 

 literature famous, — a place whence some of the noted publishers 

 in the American trade found their way to Boston and other places, 

 a city of great intellectual activity. In old days it was well sup- 

 plied with retail stores, some of which grew to be publishing- 

 houses. The book-trade of Salem has not been displaced by a free 

 public library. It is only within the last year or two that such an 

 institution has been started. Yet only one book-store of any im- 

 portance remains in Salem, and that is largely devoted to the sale 

 of wall-papers, etc., and expects rather to take orders than to carry 

 any considerable amount of standard books in stock. The live 

 book-trade has gone almost entirely into the hands of an enterpris- 

 ing dry-goods house, who are members of the Syndicate Trading 

 Company, and who handle at Christmas time and throughout the 

 year a considerable quantity of books, but could scarcely be relied 

 upon to perform the functions of the old-fashioned book-store, with 

 its supply of standards on the shelves, tempting a customer to in- 

 crease his library with books that are books. It can scarcely be 

 said that the retail trade has gone to Boston, for the trade of Bos- 

 ton is not so wonderfully larger than it was in old times ; and this 

 state of things is more or less true throughout the country. Book- 

 selling and book-buying have both suffered a decadence in quality 

 as well as in quantity, except in the case of books of exceptional 

 popularity. The size of editions is scarcely larger, if as large, as in 

 the days when we had not a third of our present reading popula- 

 tion. 



ALUMINIUM AND ITS MANUFACTURE BY THE 

 DEVILLE-CASTNER PROCESS. 



Aluminium was shown to be a distinct substance in 1754 by 

 Marggraff. It may be ranked among the noble metals, because it 

 does not tarnish, even when exposed to damp and very impure 

 atmospheres ; and until lately it .,was almost a precious metal, the 

 price ranging as high as 60 shillings per pound. Indeed, even 

 now, absolutely pure aluminium is scarcely to be obtained, the 

 metal used in the arts being contaminated with from two to five 

 per cent of iron, silicon, and other substances. The chemical 

 symbol of aluminium is Al : its atomic weight is 27.4. Aluminium 

 is very widely diffused over the earth. Its silicate forms the chief 

 constituent of clays, and enters into the composition of a vast 

 number of minerals, especially of felspars. Its fluoride, united 

 with that of sodium, forms cryolite. A ferruginous hydrate is 

 known as bauxite, and forms probably the most convenient ore 

 from which to extract the metal. 



The method now generally adopted in preparing aluminium was 

 discovered early in this century by the eminent French chemist, 

 Henri Saint-Claire Deville, and consists in reducing the double 

 chloride of aluminium and sodium (2NaClAl2Cl) by means of 

 metallic sodium at a high temperature. The manufacture, there- 

 fore, resolves itself naturally into two parallel processes ; the one 

 comprising the preparation of the double chloride, and the other 

 the production of metallic sodium. As sodium to the extent of 

 nearly three times the weight of aluminium is required in the re- 



