1876.] Recent Literature. . 105 
from them express the juice, making the dry pulp into cakes, and saving 
them for winter; the wine they drink about their camp-fires, until the 
midnight is merry with their revelries. 
“They gather the seeds of many plants, as sunflowers, golden-rods, 
and grasses. For this purpose they have large conical baskets which 
hold two or more bushels. The women carry them on their backs, sus- 
pended from their foreheads by broad straps, and with a smaller one in 
the left hand, and a willow-woven fan in the right, they walk among the 
grasses and sweep the seed into the smaller basket, which is emptied, 
now and then, into the larger, until it is full of seeds and chaff; then 
they winnow out the chaff, and roast the seeds. They roast these curi- 
ously: they put the seeds with a quantity of red-hot coals into a willow 
tray, and, by rapidly and dexterously shaking and tossing them, keep the 
coals aglow, and the seed tray from burning. As if by magic, so skilled 
are the crones in this work, they roll the seeds to one side of the tray 
as they are roasted, and the coals to the other. Then they grind the 
seeds into a fine flour, and make it into cakes and mush.” 
A chapter follows containing A Report on a Trip to the Mouth of the 
Dirty Devil River, by A. H. Thompson, which is succeeded by the 
second part, On the Physical Features of the Valley of the Colorado, 
while the third part is zoélogical in its nature, containing treatises by Dr. 
Coues and Mr. Goode 
Corr’s Cueck-List or NORTH AMERICAN BATRACHIANS AND REP- 
TILES.! — This is the first of a new series of works published by the 
Department of the Interior for the United States National Museum, under 
the direction of the Smithsonian Institution. Besides the check-list 
which Will prove useful to students, Professor Cope enters into an elab- 
orate discussion of the geographical distribution of the vertebrates, par- 
ticularly the batrachians and reptiles, of the northern hemisphere. The 
author divides the earth’s fauna into six realms, those of the northern 
hemisphere being the realm of the new world (Nearctic) and that of the 
< old world (Palearctic). However well these terms (first proposed, we 
believe, by Dr. Sclater) may apply to the vertebrates, when we come to 
the insects and marine invertebrates the terms “ Nearctic”’ and “ Pale- 
arctic,” as applied to the circumpolar region, seem to us to be somewhat 
artificial, though applying well to the north temperate hemisphere. The 
essay, however, will be found exceedingly useful and timely. 
IDDER’s NATURAL History OF KERGUELEN Istanp.? — The sec- 
ond Bulletin of the United States National Museum contains the notes on 
the birds of Kerguelen Island made by Dr. Kidder while attached as natu- 
* Check: List of North American Batrachia and Reptilia. By Epwarp D. Core. 
Bulletin of the United States National Museum. I. Washington, D. C. 1875. 
8v0, pp. 104. 
* Contributions to the Natural History of Kerguelen Island. By J. H. Kipper, 
ulletin of the United States National Museum. II. Washington, D. C. 
1875. 8vo, pp. 51, 
