GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 
81 
18 pages in length, is devoted mainly to re-stating the well-known argu- 
ments against permitting the entrance of railroads. The book closes with 
a series of appendices comprising a list of geographic names, with their 
origin, the legislation affecting the park and rules for its administration, 
a statement of appropriations for its maintenance, a list of its superin- 
tendents, and a bibliography. It is difficult to place this book. It ranks 
for above the ordinary guide-book, yet as a history its value is lessened 
b\' the military bias of the writer, and as a geographic work, descrij^tive 
of this interesting region, it may be characterized by the statement tliat 
onh’ 14 pages are devoted to its geography and geology, 13 to geysers and 
hot springs, and 11 to the native life of the region. The book is profusely 
illustrated with beautiful cuts, and contains several maps, but the latter 
are not in keeping with the typography and with the other illustrations. 
Sixteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey. Part III : 
^lineral Resources of the United States, 1894, ^Metallic products. Pp. 
648. Washington, 1895. 
It is not easy to recognize in the handsome royal octavo volume before 
us the mineral report of the Geological Survey, which has hitherto ap- 
peared in so much less attractive a form. Although Dr Day’s reports no 
longer constitute a series by themselves, they cannot be said to have lost 
even in imlividuality, for the new volume is so profusely illustrated with 
maps and diagrams and is in almost every other respect so distinctly 
superior to its predecessors as not only to add greatly to its practical value, 
but to place it in the verj^ front rank of those admirable publications with 
which the Uniteil States government enriches from time to time the scien- 
tific literature of the world. The report contains statistics of the produc- 
tion of the various metallic minerals (those of the non-metallic are to follow 
in a separate volume) in the different states of the Union ; hut it does more 
than this. It presents like statistics (in many cases extending over a long 
Series of years) for other countries, together with tables of exports and 
imports. In atldition to these statistical compilations it contains several 
hundred pages of intere.sting and instructive te.xt on the geographic dis- 
tribution of the mineral resources of the world, in the.preparation of which 
several enunent experts hav'e been specially employed. The volume is, 
in short, a veritable mine of valuable information concerning some of the 
most important branches of human industry. 
Terrestrial Magiu-tisni: .\n International (Quarterly Journal. Publislu'd 
under the Auspices of the Ryenson Physical Laboratory, A. A. Michel- 
son. Director. Cldcago, University Press. Vol. I, Xo. I, January, 
1896. Edited by L. .\. P>auer, witli the Codi)eration of a large Number 
of American ami Foreign Associates. 
Tlie compass is a very (jld invention, the discovery its north and 
south jfointing j)ropcrty having been made by the Chinese centuries ago 
It is more than four centuries since it receiveil a (lxe<l i>lace in navigation 
under the name Mariner’s Compass. That it docs not point tridy north 
and sontli hut deiiartsor declines from the lueriilian was known inCohmi- 
biis’ day. At that time it was supposed that the departure from true 
north, or declination of the needle, was constant f<jr any one i>lace, thougli 
