Miscellaneous Intelligence. 20? 



the reason for selecting such double stars for measurement before 

 exploring the field further is evident. " For many years," the 

 author remarks, " I have been hunting for a faint star with some 

 certain proper motion, but so far without success." 



Considerable attention has been given to an interesting group 

 of 39 bright stars, principally in Taurus, first noted by Boss, which 

 appear to have a proper motion in common of about 0-10" in the 

 same direction. Mr. Burnham has added three more, and most 

 of the 42 have been located by position angle and distance from 

 one or more neighboring faint stars. w. b. 



5. Astronomy : A Popular Handbook / by Harold Jacoby, 

 Rutherford Professor of Astronomy in Columbia University. 

 Pp. 435. New York, 1913 (The Macmillan Co.).— The accumu- 

 lation of new material in astronomy warrants the publication of 

 popular handbooks at short intervals, and this work brings the 

 record up to date most satisfactorily, both in the choice of mate- 

 rial and the form of presentation. If the ordinary reader cannot 

 digest all that it offers, it is due to the subject rather than the 

 author whose faculty both for elucidating and condensing is 

 unusual, as is his independence of thought. 



An example of the latter is his treatment of the question of the 

 Martian Canals, a subject on which the public possesses a large 

 amount of misinformation. Dr. Jacoby dissents from the theo- 

 ries of Percival Lowell whom he thinks to be the author rather 

 than the discoverer of most of these canals, and those who wish 

 to know the argument for the negative should not fail to read 

 this book. 



Many points of interest are excluded from this notice for want 

 of space, but something should be said of the plan of the author 

 to make the book serve the double purpose of a popular treatise 

 and a satisfactory text-book for high schools and colleges. This 

 he aims to do by keeping the text for 360 pages free from formal 

 mathematics, condensing this into an appendix of 60 pages. The 

 attempt does not seem to the present writer likely to succeed 

 without much hard labor on the part of the teacher ; except for 

 the author, whose method is no doubt best suited to his own class 

 room. w. b. 



6. The American Chemical Journal. — The fiftieth volume of 

 the American Chemical Journal, completed in 1913, closes the 

 independent career of this important periodical. Started in 18*79 

 at the Johns Hopkins University under the editorship of Profes- 

 sor Remsen, it has occupied from the start a pi - ominent place in 

 chemical literature and has done a great work in stimulating the 

 ever-increasing activity of chemical research in this country. In 

 future the papers, which would have come to it, will be cared for 

 by the Journal of the American Chemical Society. An index to 

 the fifty volumes of the American Chemical Journal is to be 

 issued and will be sent, to those ordering it, by the Johns Hop- 

 kins Press, Baltimore ; price one dollar and fifty cents. 



