170 Scientific Intelligence. 



of Associations : Section V. History and Methods of the Fisheries, 

 in two volumes with an atlas in quarto of 255 plates, volume ii, 882 

 pp., 4to. Washington, 1887. — The two quarto volumes just issued, 

 one of plates, bear the date 1887, in which year they were ready 

 for the printers, and, like vol. i, were therefore prepared under the 

 active cooperation and superintendence of the late Commissioner 

 Spencer F. Baird, whose name is at the head of the title page. 

 The associate authors with Mr. Goode in the preparation of the 

 volumes of Section V, are nineteen in number, all able in their de- 

 partments. The subjects treated in the volume just issued are 

 the Whale Fishery, the Blackfish and Porpoise Fisheries, the 

 Seal and Sea-Otter Industries, the Turtle and Terrapin Fisheries, 

 the Crab, Lobster, Crayfish, Rock-Lobster, Shrimp and Prawn 

 Fisheries, the Leech Industry and Trepang Fishery, and the 

 Sponge Fishery and Trade. 



The Fish Commission has done a great work for the various 

 industries represented, and incidentally a great work for science 

 in the explorations of the ocean's depths and their species. It is a 

 department in which economical and scientific investigations neces- 

 sarily go hand in hand, and its results are vastly more important 

 than is generally appreciated. 



7. Darwinism : an exposition of the Theory of Natural Selec- 

 tion, with some of its applications ; by Alfred Russell Wallace, 

 LL.D., F.L.S., etc., 494 pp., 12mo, with maps and illustrations. 

 London and New York, 1889 (Macmillan & Co.).— Dr. Wallace, 

 who shares with Darwin the credit of first bringing forward and 

 illustrating the principle of Natural Selection, is the best exponent 

 of the subject living. His own travels and observations over all 

 the world have given him a fund of facts in all departments of 

 science which his familiarity with species, and clear-sighted vis- 

 ion, enable him to use to great advantage in the illustration of 

 the subject. On some important points he diverges from Darwin, 

 and this renders the work more discriminating and of much 

 greater interest. The enquirer as to evolution, desiring to know 

 what it is, and where it tends, should begin with Dr. Wallace's 

 work. 



IY. Astronomy. 



1. Researches on the Spectrum, Visible and Photographic, of 

 the Great Nebula in Orion. — Mr. Huggins has communicated to 

 the Royal Society, in his own name and that of Mrs. Huggins, 

 some important observations upon the spectrum of the nebula in 

 Orion. In 1882 he described a new bright line in a photographic 

 spectrum of the nebula, to which he assigned a wave-length of 

 about 3730. Owing to the necessity of using a wide slit a more 

 exact value could not be given. 



On the 5th February, 1888, he photographed the spectrum with 

 a narrow slit and found the same line and a pair of less conspic- 

 uous lines on the less refrangible side of the strong line. The con- 

 tinuous spectra due to two of the four bright stars or the trapez- 



