I ^89.] Recent Literature. 485 
ways, and both belong to genera exclusively North American. 
Both lend themselves well to the sculptor's art. Between them 
there is little choice, but we rather lean to the tulip-tree, 
which, besides its conspicuous flowers and very characteristic 
leaves, is one of the monarchs of our woods. It thus well rep- 
resents our characteristic richness in forests, and expresses, 
figuratively, the strength and greatness of our country. 
The scientific editor of the New York Tribune will be prob- 
ably on hand at the Toronto meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, to misrepresent the 
science of the United States. According to this luminary, the 
only important scientific meeting held in America up to 1884, 
was that of the British Association at Montreal that year. As 
Toronto is not on American soil, he willprobably find thisyear's 
meeting the next most important. The left-handed compli- 
ments paid by this gentlemen to American science will, 
perhaps, suggest to the readers of his articles that the mind 
of their author acts inversely as the square of the distance of 
its objects. We wish we could find an integration of the 
matter of these articles at all correspondent to the dissipation 
of energy wasted in writing them. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
ScUDDER's Mesozoic COCKROACHES.'— On comparing 
mesozoic with palaeozoic cockroaches the author finds the fun- 
damental distinction is in the change which the principal ner- 
vures of the upper wings have undergone, by the basal or total 
amalgamation of some of them— a change which reaches its 
culmination in living species. In the basis of these differences 
he divides the mesozoic cockroaches into three groups: a, 
those in which only the mediastinal and scapular veins are amal- 
gamated ; b, those in which the externomedian is united with 
one of the veins on either side of it ; c, those in which either 
^ A Review of Mesozoic Cockroaches. By Samuel H. Scudder. Extract from 
