Literature. ly^ 



The flatness of Denmark is something remarkable, a recent 

 geographical discussion having shown that the loftiest mountain 

 of the country is only 535 feet high. 



The proportion of colors in eyes in Italy is thus estimated by 

 Prof Mantegazzi : black eyes, twenty-two per cent; chestnut, 

 sixty-four; blue, eleven, and gray eyes, three per cent. 



The diminished cost of production in metal work was illustrated 

 recently by Dr. John Percy, in an address to the British Iron and 

 Steel Institute, by the statement that a gross of steel pens, for- 

 merly costing thirty-five dollars, might now be produced for eight 

 cents. The cost of making gold chains has been reduced to an 

 eighth of what it was. 



An English inventor claims to save one-third ofthe time and 

 ten per cent, of loss in the cooking of joints of meat, by thrusting 

 into them metallic conductors to ensure their simultaneous heat- 

 ing throughout, these conductors being copper blades with globu- 

 lar heads of iron. Flesh is a very bad conductor of heat, and 

 without this device the outside ofthe meat is greatly over- cooked, 

 with much waste of nutritious juices, before the inside is well 

 done. 



LITERATURE. 



Studies in the Botany of California and parts adjacent, 

 VI. I. Notes on the botany of Santa Cruz Island. 2. A cata- 

 logue ofthe flowering plants and ferns ofthe Island of Santa Cruz. 

 3. Three new species, by Edward L. Greene; extract from Bulle- 

 tin 7, California "Academy of Sciences, 42 pp. 



This contribution to our botany, by Prof Greene, is unusually 

 interesting, comprising as it does the results of the author's so- 

 journing on Santa Cruz Island, previous to which only four 

 species of plants were known from that island, while he gives a 

 list of three hundred and twenty-one. About twenty-five of them 

 are^old world plants, naturalized in California; forty-eight of them 

 are as yet unknown except from this or other islands off" our coast; 

 twenty-eight are peculiar to Santa Cruz itself, while twenty-four 

 were entirely new to the science. 



Grasses of the South. — A report on certain grasses and 

 forage plants for cultivation in the south and southwest, by Dr. 

 Geo. Vasey; Bulletin 3, Dept. of Agriculture, 6 pp., [6 plates, 1887. 



A new Philosophy of the Sun, by Dr. H. R. Rogers, 27 pp. 



New Genus and Spices of Polydesmidae, by Charles H. 

 Bollman; from Entomol. gica Americana, iii, 45. 



Fresh-Water Sponges from Mexico; by Edward Potts, from 

 Proc. N. S. Nat. Mus., 1885, p. 587. 



