248 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



the means of finding the date of any volume cited in a reference 

 and thus ascertaining the time of the investigation or discovery 

 referred to. Such references ought always to have the date 

 affixed, hut, unfortunately, the great majority fail of this. The 

 work has heen handsomely and generously printed under the 

 auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and makes a compact and 

 convenient volume. The science of the world owes much to 

 Professor Bolton, and also the Smithsonian Institution for the 

 volume. 



3. Contributions to North American Ethnology, volume v, 

 4to. Washington, 1882. (TJ. S. Geographical and Geological 

 Survey, J. W. Powell in Charge.) — This important volume con- 

 tains three extended memoirs, illustrated by many excellent plates. 

 The subjects are : Observations on cup-shaped and other lapidari ft 

 sculpture in the Old World and in America, by Charles Rau, 112 

 pp. ; On prehistoric trephining and cranial amulets, by Robert 

 Fletcher, 30 pp. ; A study of the manuscript Troano, by Cyrus 

 Thomas, with an introduction by D. G. Brinton, pp. xxxvii and 237. 



4. The Microscope in Botany : A Guide for the Microscopic 

 Investigation of Vegetable Substances ; from the German of Dr. 

 Julius W. Behrens ; translated and edited by Rev. A. B. Her- 

 vey, assisted by R. H. Ward. 466 pp. 8vo, Boston, 1885 (S. E. 

 Cassino & Co.). 



OBITUARY. 



M. Henri Fresca, member of the French Academy since 1872, 

 and distinguished for his physical researches and in mechanical 

 engineering, died on the 21st of last June. 



M. Henri Milne Edwards, the eminent zoologist of France, 

 author of works on general zoology and the Invertebrata, and 

 particularly the departments of Crustacea and corals, died in July, 

 in his 86th year, having been born in Belgium, at Bruges, on 

 the twenty-third of October of the year 1800. 



Prof. W. C. Kerr, State Geologist of North Carolina for 

 eighteen years, and more recently connected with the United 

 States Geological Survey, died at Asheville, N. O, on the ninth of 

 August, of consumption. Prof. Kerr was an excellent observer 

 in geology, and in his few publications brought out results of 

 great interest. He was the first in the country to call attention 

 to, and rightly explain, the unequal steepness in the opposite 

 banks of streams, where flowing through yielding deposits (Rep. 

 Geol. N. Carolina, vol. i); and the first to appreciate adequately 

 and describe the action of frost in producing the deep movement 

 and bedded arrangement of loose material on slopes (this Journal, 

 III, xxi, 1881), the depth in North Carolina being such as to 

 indicate, in his view, the unusual conditions of a Glacial era. 

 Owing to deficient appropriations, only one volume of the State 

 Survey Reports has been published. He was occupied with in- 

 vestigations under the United States Geological Survey when his 

 failing health brought his labors to an untimely close. 



