B12 



NOTICES OF Hooks MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE 



[1854. 



Tin-. Anolo Americas M ioaiinjj — Maoloar & • '".. Toronto. 



'lip' !;:• -i nuinbor of tho fifth vol f this well-sustained publication 



appears in a a in dress, Tho change i-: :> very decided 



and augurs well for the success of the enterprising pul The 



engraving of tlio Cedar Rapids is admirably oxeoutod. Wo are both 

 onoouraged and pleased at witnessing so marked a progress. 



Physical Geography, by Mary Somehvii.i.e : American Edition by 

 \\. s. \V. Ruschenbeboee, M.D. — Philadelphia; Blanohard and Leu, 

 1854. 



Tho accomplished Author of the Connexion of the Physical Sciences 

 has sufficiently indicated the importance and scope of Physical Geo- 

 graphy in the first paragraph of the work before us. " Physical 

 Geography is a description of tho earth, the sea, and the air, with 

 their inhabitants, animal and vegetable, of the distribution of these 

 organized beings, and tho causes of that distribution." 



As a genoral view of the earth with its inhabitants, Mrs. Somervillc's 

 Physical Geography has acquired a wide and well deserved reputation. 

 1c will, however, be very easily understood that in a so comprehensive 

 a work many inaccuracies occur in the first edition which are not 

 expected to appear in the second or third. It is oven more reasonable 

 to supposo that an American edition, professedly well supplied with 

 notes and emendations by its American editor, would be especially 

 precise and exact in tho physical geography of this continent. 



Anxious to ascertain how far tho " New American from the third 

 and revised London edition," kept pace with modern discoveries and 

 knowledge of facts within the ken of every college boy in the United 

 States and Canada, we bestowed particular attention upon those 

 portions of the work which described tho region of the Great Lakes— 

 naturally supposing that Dr. Ruschenberger would also have given 

 his attention to this part of the work. On page 264 we find the fol- 

 lowing : — 



" The American lakes contain more than half the amount of fresh 

 water on the globe. The altitude of these lakes shows the slope of the 

 continent: the absolute elevation of Lake Superior is 672 feet ; Lake 

 Huron is 30 feet lower ; Lake Erie 32 feet lower than the Huron, and 

 Lake Ontario is 331 feet below the level of Erie. The river Niagara, 

 which unites the two last lakes, is 33J miles long, and in that distance 

 it descends 66 feet ; it falls in rapids "through 55" feet of that height in 

 the last half mile, but the upper part of its course is navigable. The 

 height of the Cascade at Niagara is 162 feet on the American side of 

 the central island, ami 1,125 feet wide — on the Canadian side the fall is 

 149 feet high, aDd 2,100 feet wide — the most magnificent sheet of 

 falling water known, though many are higher. The river St. 

 Lawrence which drains the whole, slopes 234 feet between the bottom 

 of the cascade and the sea." — {Page 204.) 



The sum of the differences between the levels of Lake Ontario and 

 Superior would give, according to the above statement, 393 feet, which 

 subtracted from 672 feet, the altitude of Lake Superior above the sea, 

 gives 279 feet : or the height of Lake Ontario above tide level— where- 

 as a few lines lower down the true altitude of 234 feet is given. 



Every Canadian familiar witli the majestic scenery of the Falls of 

 Niagara will recognize the misconception which is apparent in the 

 quotation given above, and which the American Editor should not have 

 overlooked. The introduction of a few words will render the passage 

 clear, aud remove the arithmetical absurdity which also exists in the 

 numbers given, and their sum. The descents in the Niagara river are 

 as follows : — - 



Black Rock to head of Rapids ....'. 15 feet. 



Rapids to Cascade . . ! 52 .. 



Cascade 160 ,. 



Cascade, to Lewislon 104 „ 



:::;! feet. 



The di I the l It •■: i anada is decidedly novel. They 



icfly of "black and white Spruce." We give the authors 



own words : — 



" Tho Conn a millions of acres of good soil, covered with 



immense i Upper I fori and in many 



.aluablo of the British Colonies in the west : 



peon grain, and every plant that rcqniros a hot summer, 



i endure ; old win there. The forc-t consists 



ol black and white the Weymouth and other pines — 



trees which da a< t undergrowth : they grow to great height, 



like bare spars, with a tufted crown, casting a deep gloom below. Tho 



• -.H from ago is a comm .nil not without 



danger, us it often causes the destruction of those adjacent ; and un 



ice storm is awful.'' — [Page 128.) 



Tho passage given above is modified in other portions of the " Phy- 

 sical Geography," but, perhaps, not in a manner which will suit the 

 ideas Canadians are accustomed to form of their own magnificent 

 invests. On page 864 we find the following : — 



"Boundless forest ■ and white spruce, with nn undergrowth 



of reindeer moss, cover the country south of the arctic region, which 

 are afterwards mixed with other trees: goo-cherries, Btrawbei ries, 



currants, and some other plants thrive there. There are vast forests 

 in Canada of pines, oak, ash, hickory, red beech, birch, the lofty 

 Canadian poplar, sometimes 100 feet high, and 36 feet in circum- 

 ference, and sugar-maple ; the prevailing plants are Kalmias, Azaleas, 

 and Asters, the former vernal, the latter autumnal; Solidagos and 

 Asters arc the most characteristic plants of this region. 



" The splendour of the North American flora is displayed in the 

 United States ; the American Sycamore, chesnut, black walnut, 

 hickory, white cedar, wild cherry, red birch, locust-tree, tulip-tree, or 

 liriodendron, the glory of American forests : liquid-atnbar, oak, ash, 

 pine-trees bf many species, grow luxuriantly, with an undergrowth of 

 Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Andromedas, Geradias, Calycanthus, Hydran- 

 gea, and many more of woody texture, with an infinite variety of herb- 

 aceous and climbing plants." 



A little more attention to the Physical Geography of this continent 

 on the part of the American Editor, in several other instances which 

 we could point out, would have rendered this valuable and instructive 

 work doubly interesting to the Canadian reader.. 



Miscellaneous Intelligence, 



On the Gluten of Wheat. — M. Jlillon, compelled by iiis high mili- 

 tary position to rather a nomadic life, has for some years suspended the fine 

 researches which he had undertaken — researches on the oxydized com- 

 pounds of nitrogen, chlorine, mercury, nitric ether, also on vegetable 

 physiology, etc., winch had given him a high rank among men of science. 

 Removed from his laboratory and sent to Africa, for political reasons, he 

 has found the means of carrying on some important investigations without 

 a chemical laboratory, and he has just now brought before the Academy a 

 series of papers which he proposes to present, containing the results of some 

 researches on wheat. 



In his first memoir, be brings out the important fact that there are some 

 kinds of wheat, of good appearance, that contain no gluten. His attention 

 was called to the subject by the wheat of Guyotville (Algeria), which 

 although appearing well, was nearly destitute of this important ingredient. 

 He was thus led to examine a quantity of the wheat poor in glutcu, and he 

 found it to be a mixture of rich grains with others containing none of this 

 albuminoid substance. Dough made from the wheat of Guyotville without 

 gluten is worked with more difficulty than ordinary dough, and the bread 

 is swallowed with some difficulty, like that which is dry or stale. The 

 nitrogenized substance of this wheat is soluble in water. 



In a second memoir. M. ilillon takes up the chemical composition of 

 different varieties of wheat, and he deduces from his results a distribution 

 of the wheats — using terms already in use — into tender wheat, and hard 

 ■wheat, the characters of which are as follows : — 



Tender Wheat. — Fracture white, opaque, farinaceous, the starch and 

 escaping more or less abundantly : a more or less complete replacement of 



