October 26, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



203 



announce Mr. Humbert's book, ' Ireland under Coercion,' which 

 has created so much discussion in Great Britain. Thomas Whit- 

 taker is about to publish a library edition of Pascal's ' Thoughts,' 

 from the text of Molinier, by C. Kegan Paul. He also begins a 

 new series of illustrated books under the title of ' Whittaker's 

 Home Library.' The first three volumes will be ' Romance of 

 Animal Life,' by J. G. Wood ; 'Leaders Upward and Onward,' by 



H. C. Ewart; and 'Round the Globe,' by W. C. Proctor. 



Robert Clarke & Co. have in press a book by Joseph S. Tunison, 

 of the New York Tribune's editorial staff, to be entitled ' Master 

 Vergil : a Series of Studies upon the Mediasval Reputation of the 

 Author of the yEneid.' 'Vergil and the Devil,' ' Vergil in Literary 

 Tradition,' ' Vergil's Book of Magic' ' Vergil the Man of Science,' 

 ■* Vergil the Saviour of Rome,' ' Vergil the Lover,' ' Vergil the 

 Prophet,' and ' Vergil in Later Literature," are the chapter head- 

 ings, and give a fair idea of the contents and character of the book. 



Henry Willey, New Bedford, Mass., has just published ' A 



Synopsis of the North American Lichens, Part IL,' by the late 

 Edward Tuckerman, comprising the Lccuicacei and (in part) 

 the Craphidacei. The work, which was left unfinished at the 

 time of the aiithor's death, has been completed by Mr. Willey, who 

 has also added other lichens from Professor Tuckerman's various 

 works. Students of this interesting and difficult branch of botani- 

 cal science have now for the first time a handy manual by two of 

 its foremost exponents. Edwin Nelson, Amherst, Mass., will sup- 

 ply the book to the trade. D. C. Heath & Co. have begun the 



publication of a series of leaflets for the guidance of students of 

 English literature of the nineteenth ceatury, prepared by Louise 

 Manning Hodgkins, professor of English literature at Wellesley 

 College. The following English and American authors will be in- 

 cluded : Scott, Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, 

 Keats, Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, Robert Browning, Mrs. 

 Browning, Carlyle, George Eliot, Tennyson, Rossetti, Irving, Bry- 

 ant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, and 

 Lowell. The Tennyson, George Eliot, Hawthorne, and Longfel- 

 low papers are now ready. Cassell cS: Co. announce a work 



entitled 'The Truth about Russia,' by W. T. Stead, editor of the 

 Pall Mall Gazette, who does not, it is said, share the traditional 

 British attitude of suspicion toward the empire of the north. 



Ginn & Co. will publish in December, in the College Series 



of Latin Authors (edited under the supervision of Clement L. 

 Smith and Tracy Peck), ' Cicero's Brutus,' edited by Martin Kel- 

 logg, professor of Latin in the University of California. In the 

 ' Brutus,' which was composed in 46 B.C., and purports to be a 

 conversation with Atticus and Brutus, Cicero traces the develop- 

 ment of oratory among the Romans down to his own time, with 

 critical notices of about two hundred speakers. The long cata- 

 logue is relieved of dryness by the dialogue form, the freedom of 

 digression, and by Cicero's fresh and teeming style. Professor 

 Kellogg has edited the work especially for early college-reading. 



J. B. Lippincott Company announce as in press ' The Writer's 



Hand-Book.' a general guide to the art of composition and style ; 

 ■■ An Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy ' (entirely new 

 edition), by Joseph Leidy ; ' A Cyclopajdia of Diseases of Children 

 and their Treatment, Medical and Surgical,' edited by J. M. Keat- 

 ing. M.D. ; ' Paradoxes of a Philistine,' by William S. Walsh ; ' His- 

 tory of the Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the 

 Promulgation of the Constitution of the United States,' edited by 

 Hampton L. Carson ; ' The Clinical Diagnosis of Non-Surgical Dis- 

 eases by Bacteriological, Chemical, and Microscopical Methods of 

 Research,' by Dr. Rudolf von Jaksch, translated into English by Dr. 



Cagney. ' The Private Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell,' to 



be published in two volumes in October by Longmans, Green, & 

 Co., consists chiefly of hitherto unpublished letters of the liberator, 

 abundantly annotated, and connected by only sufficient narrative to 

 explain their occasion. Although called private, O'Connell's letters, 

 even those to his wife, are chiefly on public topics. There is a 

 peculiar timeliness in the publication just now of this first-hand and 

 personal account of the successful struggle for Catholic emancipa- 

 tion, and of the later ineffectual effort for the Repeal of the Union. 



In Lippiiicott's for November an article of particular interest 



is Mr. Edgar Saltus's ' Morality in Fiction.' Another article that 

 will be eagerly perused is the ' Extracts from the Diarj' of John R. 



Thompson,' compiled by Elizabeth Stoddard. Thompson, a well- 

 known Southern littdrateur, was sent to London to edit the Index 

 on behalf of the Confederacy, and he was thrown with men like 

 Tennyson, Carlyle, Gladstone, Dickens, Thackeray, and many 

 others, of whom he gives entertaining reminiscences and anecdotes. 

 Lincoln L. Eyre's article on ' Corporate Suretyship 'is interesting and 

 valuable. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 

 The topographic work of the arid lands and irrigation survey 

 has been completed at the United States Geological Survey in 

 Washington, and all the parties to be employed this year are already 

 in the field. The hydrographic branch involves some very difficult 

 scientific problems, the solution of which may cause some delay. 

 Among these are the discovery of a method that shall be more ac- 

 curate than any now employed to measure the volume of water 

 that passes through a river. This is probably among the simplest 

 of the problems. Another is a means of ascertaining the amount 

 of sediment a river carries, and a third is the invention of some 

 method of determining the annual amount of evaporation from the 

 surfaces of the proposed reservoirs. 



— General Greely, in his annual report, says that the percentages 

 of successful weather-predictions made by the signal office for the 

 year were 78.4; wind, 75.5; temperature, 74.2; general average, 

 76.7. The number of cold-wave signals displayed was 1,743, of 

 which 1,240, or 71.5 per cent, were verified. 



— Dr. Theodore Gill, at the meeting of the Washington Biologi- 

 cal Society last Saturday evening, read a paper on ' The Families 

 of Fishes.' He said that in 1872, after eleven years' study of the 

 subject, he published a list of the families of fishes numbering 244. 

 Subsequent studies have increased this number to 300. Cuvier rec- 

 ognized only 30. At the same meeting Dr. Gill defended his use 

 of the suffix ' idae ' to the Greek or Latin root to designate a family 

 instead of ' atidse,' the one used by naturalists for a century. He 

 read letters from the most distinguished Greek and Latin scholars 

 in the country, asserting that ' idje ' was grammatically the only 

 proper form. The members of the society who discussed the sub- 

 ject were not convinced by Dr. Gill's arguments and authorities. 



— ' Sexual Characteristics of the Lachnosternis ' was the title of 

 a paper read by Mr. J. B. Smith of the Department of Agriculture, 

 before the Washington Biological Society at its meeting last Satur- 

 day evening. It described a study by the author, last summer, of 

 the June-bug, about which, strange to say, entomologists before 

 knew comparatively little. The study resulted in the identification, 

 among the many thousands of specimens captured in the District 

 of Columbia, of four strongly marked, well-defined species, the 

 female as well as the male of each species being determined. 



— In a pamphlet, ' Great-Circle Sailing,' published by Long- 

 mans, Green, & Co., Richard A. Proctor advocates the use of the 

 stereographic polar projection for laying out the shortest sea- 

 routes. As is well known, the gnomonic projection is used for 

 finding the great circle between two points that are not too far dis- 

 tant from each other. As this projection, however, does not allow 

 the representation of more than about one-third of the earth's sur- 

 face, it is not suitable for finding the great circle between points 

 that are far apart. Proctor uses the property of the stereographic 

 projection, that each circle on the sphere is projected into a circle, 

 which may be constructed on the map with great ease. Thus, by 

 laving a circle through two points and one of their antipodes, the 

 shortest route between the two points is found. A similar con- 

 struction permits the finding of the shortest route which_does not 

 cross a certain degree of latitude beyond which navigation would 

 be dangerous. Two maps of the earth are constructed. — one in 

 south polar projection, the other in north polar projection, — and 

 each is adapted to construct routes in one hemisphere. 



— Prof. Dr. Paulsen of the University of Berlin. Germany, in a 

 letter in regard to the Berlitz schools of languages, says, " The 

 method of Mr. Berlitz appears to me, as far as I have had the op- 

 portunity of familiarizing myself with it by some lessons and the 

 expedients applied, a process specially suited to lead the pupil 

 rapidly, safely, and with comparatively little trouble to himself, — 



