Miscellaneous Intelligence. 363 



No. 195. Piebald Rats and Selection, An Experimental Test 

 of the Effectiveness of Selection and of the Theory of Gametic 

 Purity in Mendelian Crosses ; by W. E. Castle and John C. 

 Phillips. Pp. 54 ; 3 plates. 



2. Annual Report of the Superintendent of the United States 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey, O. H. Tittmann, to the Secretary 

 of Commerce for the year ending June 30, 1913. Pp. 102 ; one 

 chart and 15 maps. — This Annual Report gives an account of the 

 progress made by the Survey in the different lines of observation 

 along the coast and in the interior of the United States and of its 

 various dependencies. The results are clearly exhibited graphi- 

 cally by a series of charts indicating, for example, the progress in 

 triangulation, topography, hydrography ; also showing the prin- 

 cipal astronomic stations, those for telegraphic longitude and 

 magnetic observations, the leveling routes, etc. 



The Survey has issued a large number of separate publications, 

 including the following quarto volumes : Results of magnetic 

 observations by D. L. Hazard, at Vieques, Porto Rico, at Sitka, 

 Alaska, at Tucson, Arizona, at Honolulu, IT. T. ; Effect of topog- 

 raphy and isostatic compensation upon the intensity of gravity, 

 by W. Bowie (noticed in vol. xxxv, p. 197) ; Determination of 

 time, longitude, latitude and azimuth, 5th edition, by W. Bowie ; 

 Triangulation along the west coast of Florida, by C. H. Swick. 



3. Newcomb-Englemanns Popxdare Astronomie. Fifth edi- 

 tion; edited by Professor P. Kempf, Director of the Astrophys- 

 ical Observatory of Potsdam, with the collaboration of Professors 

 Eberhabd, Lttdendorff and Swartzschild. Pp. xii, 835, 4to, 

 with 228 illustrations and 27 tables. Leipzig and Berlin, 1913 

 (Wilhelm Englemann). — Newcomb's Popular Astronomy, first 

 published in German translation by Englemann in 1881, has 

 passed through successive editions as the progress of the science 

 has made necessary its revision and enlargement until it has now 

 reached the fifth and has grown in the process to a quarto of 835 

 pages with an index of 25 pages. 



The ground plan of Newcomb, marked by the breadth, coher- 

 ence and lucidity of the master mind, has been preserved intact 

 and the details supplied with the thoroughness and minuteness of 

 German scholarship have found room in it without overloading or 

 confusion. The result is almost an encyclopaidia of Astronomy. 

 Each edition has been in charge of a recognized authority. After 

 the first it was Vogel until his death in 1907, and he is succeeded 

 by Kempf, director of the Astrophysical Observatory at Potsdam. 



A valuable feature is a chapter of biographical sketches in 58 

 pages, of 185 astronomers from Thales and Pythagoras to Poin- 

 care and Keeler. By it some men will obtain an immortality 

 well deserved but which otherwise they might have missed. For 

 example, it is well that posterity should know that Charlois, 

 who died in 1910, spent 16 years in the observatory of Perrotin 

 at Nizza and discovered over 100 minor planets — a worthy exam- 

 ple of the same kind of usefulness as that of Schwab, the astro- 



