GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 
213 
vicinity from the pen of Mr J. S. Diller, the accomplished geologist to 
whom the country is in no small measure indebted for its scientific 
knowledge of this great natural wonder. 
The new edition of the Kand-McNally state pocket maps cannot fail to 
add to the well-deserved popularity they have so long enjoyed. The 
maps are clearer and handsomer than ever, and the geographical index by 
which they are accompanied is brought down to the date of publication, 
the population according to tlie state census of 1895 being substituted for 
that at the federal census of 1890 in all states in which an interdecennial 
census has been taken. 
Nothing could be more admirable in its way than is Mr Gannett’s pre- 
sentation in the pamphlet recently published by the Trustees of the John 
F. Slater Fund of the facts brought to light by the Eleventh Census con- 
cerning the occupations of the negroes. The treatise is a model of lucid 
condensation, the brief compass of a dozen pages sufficing for a most sat- 
isfactory setting forth of the following important facts and conclusions, 
viz., that the negro is mainly engaged either in agriculture or personal 
service ; that he has in a generation made little progress in manufactures, 
transportation, or trade ; that males are in greater proportion engaged in 
agriculture and females in domestic service ; that the negro has during 
this generation made good progress toward acquiring property, especially 
in the form of homes and farms, and that, in just so far as he has acquired 
possession of real estate, it is safe to say he has become more valuable as 
a citizen. The author’s conclusion that the outlook for the Afro-Ameri- 
can race is very favorable as agriculturists, but that there is little prospect 
that they will become an important factor in manufactures, transporta- 
tion, or commerce seems to be fully warranted by the expei’ience of the 
last thirty years. 
With the possible exception of the Yearbook of the Department of 
Agriculture, of which 500,000 copies are printed annually, there is no 
publication of the United States Government that is consulted more fre- 
quently or for more important purposes than are the Annual Report on 
Commerce and Navigation, published by the Bureau of Statistics of the 
Treasury Department, and the Statistical Abstract, issued annually from 
the same office. These volumes contain the statistics of e\'i)orts and im- 
jjorts, those of immigration and of the currency, and, for a large number 
of important commodities, those of total and per capita consumption and 
of market prices. They an? continually being consulted and quoted by 
politicians of every party and economists and financiers of every school, 
and however conflicting the conclusions j^rofessedly drawn from them, 
the figures themselves are usually accepted without ijiiestion. It is there- 
fore much to be regretted that the value of tlie volumes for 1S!)5 is so 
greatly impaired by the want of care with which the figures for the last 
fi.scal year have been conq)iled. While many of tlie errons are not of 
sufficient magnitude to seriously affect totals or percentages, and are 
therefore of consequence only so far as they help fo di-stroy the conli- 
•lenceof the reader in the I’ontentsof the volumes in general, this cannot 
be said of them all. In several cases they are of more or less far-reach- 
ing effect, while one by no means self-evident error of ten million dol- 
