April 26, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



329 



— D, C. Heath & Co. of Boston have in preparation an "Indus- 

 trial and Educational System of Drawing," by Langdon S. Thomp- 

 son, A.M., recently professor of the subject in Purdue University, 

 and now supervisor of drawing in the schools of Jersey City. 



— " Washington's Letter to Benjamin Harrison," governor of 

 Virginia in 1784, on the Potomac navigation scheme and the gen- 

 eral question of the opening of the West, has just been added by 

 the directors of the Old South studies in history to their new gen- 

 eral series of Old South Leaflets. They have also added Wash- 

 ington's circular letter to the governors of the States, on disband- 

 ing the army in 1783, — a letter which Washington himself felt to 

 be so important that he termed it his "legacy" to the American 

 people, and which discusses the political problems of the time so 

 seriously and thoroughly that it should be read everywhere to-day 

 along with the farewell address. The " Farewell Address " (No. 4), 

 and the "First Inaugural," April 30, 1789 (No. 10), have already 

 appeared in this series. 



— In the Atlantic Monthly for May is a paper on " Temperance 

 Legislation, its Uses and Limits," written by Charles Worcester 

 Clark. Mr. Fiske contributes one of his historical papers on 

 '" Brandywine, Gennantown, and Saratoga." Mr. W. H. Bishop 

 writes a graphic sketch of " The Paris Exposition in Disha- 

 bille," giving its appearance when the buildings were just being 

 completed. He also describes the Eiffel Tower, the great land- 

 mark of the exhibition. An amusing article on " The Philosophy 

 and Poetry of Tears " is contributed by J. T. L. Preston ; Mr. 

 Frank Gaylord Cook writes about " The Lawyer in National Poli- 

 tics ; " and reminiscences of famous " Trotting Horses " are given 

 by H. C. Merwin. Josiah Royce contributes the first of two papers 

 on " Reflections after a Wandering Life in Australasia ; " another 

 paper of a lighter kind, also having to do with travel, is "At Sesen- 

 heim," by Bliss Perry. Sesenheim is the place, not far from Stras- 

 burg, where Goethe wooed, won, and ran away from Freiderike. 



— G. P. Putnam's Sons add to their announcements " The Ideals 

 of the Republic, or. Great Words from Great Americans," com- 

 prising the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the 

 United States, Washington's First Inaugural, Washington's Sec- 

 ond Inaugural, Washington's Farewell Address, Lincoln's First 

 Inaugural, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, Lincoln's Gettysburg Ad- 

 dress. The volume will contain etched portraits of Washington 

 and Lincoln, and will be issued as No. 20 of the Knickerbocker 

 Nuggets. They will also publish a translation of Dante's " Con- 

 vito," by Katharine Hillard ; a third volume in Mr. Phyfe's series 

 of works on pronunciation, entitled " Seven Thousand Words often 

 Mispronounced;" and "An Essay on Money," by James Piatt, 

 author of " Business," reprinted, under arrangemeut with the au- 

 thor, from the nineteenth English edition. For the American His- 

 torical Association they will issue a " Report of the Proceedings at 

 the Fifth Annual Meeting held in Washington in December, 1888." 

 For the American Society of Church History they will publish Vol. 

 I. of its papers, comprising " The Progress of Religious Freedom 

 as Illustrated in the Toleration Edicts," by Philip Schaff, D.D., 

 president of the society; "Indulgences in Spain," by Henry C. 

 Lea, LL.D.; "The Crisis in the Middle Ages," by James Clement 

 Moffat, D.D.; " Melanchthon's Synergism, a Study in the History 

 of Psychological Dogmatism," by Frank Hugh Foster ; " The In- 

 fluence of the Golden Legend," by Professor E. C. Richardson ; 

 and " Notes on Syncretism," by Professor Hugh McDonald Scott_ 



— Ward, Lock, & Co. have just ready " The Life and Opinions 

 of John Bright," by Francis Watt, fully illustrated. They will 

 publish at once " Camps and Quarters," a series of military sketches 

 and stories by the well-known war correspondents, Archibald 

 Forbes, George Henty, and Charles Williams. 



— Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. will shortly publish " The War for 

 Independence," by John Fiske, which will form the first volume of 

 a new series to be entitled The Riverside Library for Young People. 

 This series is intended for boys and girls who are laying the foun- 

 dation of libraries of their own, and will contain history, mechanics, 

 travel, adventure, natural history, and the best class of fiction. 

 Other volumes announced for this series are " Birds through an 

 Opera-Glass," by Florence A. Merriam ; a biography of George 



Washington, by Horace E. Scudder ; and " Up and Down the 

 Brooks," by Mary E. Bamford. 



— Harper & Brothers have just issued another volume in the 

 series of English Classics for School Reading, "Fairy Tales in 

 Prose and Verse," selected from early and recent literature, and 

 edited, with notes, by William J. Rolfe. The book is fully illus- 

 trated. 



— D. Appleton & Co. have ready a revised edition of their " Dic- 

 tionary of New York." It will be found a comprehensive guide 

 not only to the historic and curious sights, but to the practical as 

 well, such as hotels, the streets, the best modes of travel, restaur- 

 ants, places of amusement, etc. 



— Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia, have in press an illustrated 

 volume to be entitled " Living Leaders of the World." It will 

 contain short biographies of men and women now most prominent 

 all over the world. The portraits, mostly from new photographs, 

 to accompany these biographies, will be in steel plate, photogra- 

 vure, and woodcut. Many well-known authors are engaged upon 

 the biographies. 



— Theodore Voorhees, assistant general superintendent of the 

 New York Central, will contribute to the May Scribner's one of 

 the articles in the Railway Series, explaining the complicated ma- 

 chinery which is necessary to carry on the enormous freight-car 

 service of the country. The fishing article, on " The Land of the 

 Winanishe," will be illustrated from sketches and drawings by Dr. 

 Leroy M. Yale, and L. R. O'Brien, president of the Canadian 

 Academy. The advances in photography which have been made 

 possible by the dry-plate process will be treated by Professor John 

 Trowbridge of Harvard, who will illustrate some unique results by 

 photographs taken under most peculiar conditions, as under water, 

 by lamp and candle lights, and by lightning-flashes. 



— D. C. Heath & Co. of Boston have ready for immediate pub- 

 lication, in their series of Science Guides, " Thirty-Six Observation 

 Lessons on Common Minerals." by Henry Lincoln Clapp, master 

 of the George Putnam Grammar School, Boston. It is not an epit- 

 ome of any work on mineralogy, nor simply a collection of sug- 

 gestions, but a specific, practical guide for the use of the teacher. 

 By following its plan, the teacher becomes simply a director of the 

 pupils' energies, thus cultivating the scientific habit of thinking 

 and working. 



— The Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott of Abbotsford is preparing for 

 publication some hitherto unpublished journals of her great-grand- 

 father. Sir Walter Scott. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



^^Correspondevts are refjuesiedio he as brie_f as possible. The luriter's naTne is 

 in alt cases required as proof o/ good faitli, 



- The editor will be glad to put}lisli any queries consonant with the character o/ 

 the journal. 



Twenty copies of t/ie number containing his co77imunication will be furnished 

 free ts any correspondent on request. 



New Sources of Heat. 



Under the above heading, Mr. Lorin Blodget of Philadelphia 

 writes to Bradstreet's, making several assertions as to the possi- 

 biUty of obtaining heat from air without the use of much carbona- 

 ceous fuel, so that it seems worth while to have the known facts 

 in the case ventilated in the columns of Science. Will not some of 

 your correspondents show us in how far Mr. Blodget may be 

 right ? 



Quoting from Mr. Blodget, " in the course of the many improve- 

 ments and adaptations found necessary to attain the best calorific 

 results, and especially in the use of solid fuels for metallurgic pur- 

 poses, it is certain that there is a great accession of heat from other 

 sources than the ordinary yield from coal burned. In all cases 

 where a powerful blast is applied to the limited area of a melting 

 furnace, and particularly in the Bessemer converter, the degree of 

 heat generated is greatly in excess of the theoretical yield of the 

 number of pounds of coal consumed. 



" The power of any incandescent surface to intensify the heat 

 evolved by simply intensifying the blast is well known in many pro- 

 cesses, but such surfaces have not been supposed to constitute a 



