356 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VI., No. 142. 



sanction of the Czar's government, our author has 

 shown us the interior of the other prisons to which 

 poUtical prisoners are sent, and has added a sketch 

 of the Hfe led by the suspects in exile. This occu- 

 pies the middle of the volume, which opens with 

 an account of the constitutional development of 

 Eussia — if it can be called development, when 

 nearly all the movement has been backwards — 

 and it is followed by a dry though useful descrip- 

 tion of the educational system of the country, 

 written with a view to show its utter inadequacy. 

 Stepniak, whose recent articles in the London 

 Times on the present state of the Eussian army 

 are full of interest, possesses a talent for describing 

 scenes of suffering and woe, which would have 

 made his or her fortune if turned into the profit- 

 able channel of sensational novel-writing. But 

 this same faculty prejudices his reader against 

 him as the trutlif ul narrator of scenes in actual 

 life, and one puts the book down with a feeling 

 that, after all, the author has been trifling with his 

 sympathies. 



JOHNSON'S SURVEYING. 



The method of ascertaining distances and ele- 

 vations by means of the engineer's transit instru- 

 ment and stadia — where the apparent length on a 

 staff intercej^ted hj two parallel wires in a teles- 

 cope gives the distance of the staff from the 

 instrument, and the vertical angle serves to deter- 

 mine the elevation — has not, as yet, become well 

 established in private surveying practice, although 

 no one who is well informed m such matters 

 doubts its applicability to a large range of geodetic 

 work, its accuracy and convenience. 



The use of the stadia has been confined almost 

 altogether to the U. S. and state surveys. The 

 experience which Professor Johnson, of Wash- 

 ington university, St. Louis, gained wlule en- 

 gaged on the surveys of the great lakes and the 

 Mississippi Eiver, has enabled him to jDrepare a 

 very clear and concise manual of the operations of 

 topographical sm-veying as there practised. He 

 also gives a detailed description of the work of 

 measm-ing a base-line and triangulating when the 

 survey is of moderate magnitude, indeed for any 

 work except the most important, and he explains 

 the projection of maps for large and small areas. 



The book is well suited to the class-room and 

 the field. "We should have preferred, however, 

 to find his discussion of utility and universal 

 applicability of tlie method placed in the inti'oduc- 

 tion instead of the body of the text, or gathered 



A manual of the theory and practice of topographical 

 surveying by means of the transit and stadia; including 

 secondary base-line and the triangulation measurements 

 and the projection of maps. By J, B. Johnson, C. E. New 

 York, Wiley, 1885. 



into a note, for, when the reader is once assured 

 of its reliability, he will be likely to feel that a 

 manual is needlessly encumbered with such ar- 

 guments. 



NEW BOOKS. 



*** For full titles see ^Publications received at editor'' s 

 offt.ce.'' 



'Aid to engineering solution' (Jackson) is in- 

 tended to correspond with ' Aid to survey prac- 

 tice,' and to afford a succinct account of a simple 

 general method of effecting engmeering solutions, 

 as well as to give a complete set of solutions use- 

 ful to the engineer. 'Commercial organic analy- 

 sis ' (AUen) is the first volume of a revised edition, 

 devoted chiefly to the consideration of bodies of 

 the fatty series and of vegetable origin, and 

 includes chapters on alcohols, ethers, and other 

 neutral derivatives of the alcohols, sugars, starch 

 and its isomers, and vegetable acids. The second 

 volume is already on the press, and treats more 

 especially of coal-tar products and bodies of the 

 aromatic series, the fixed oils, and the products of 

 their saponification ; and the tannins will also be 

 considered. It is proposed to devote a thh-d 



volume to nitrogenized organic substances. 



' Henf rey's English coins ' (Keary) is a new edition 

 of Henf rey's ' Guide to English coins,' with some 

 corrections and enlargements, without any decided 



alterations in the form of the book. ' Silos for 



British fodder crops' {The field) is a third edition, 

 the same as the last excepting that 48 pages have 

 been appended to supply particulars respecting 



the ensilage competition of 1884. ' Mikroskop- 



ische reactionen ' (Holtzendorff ) is an attempt to 

 bring together, for the use of chemists, reactions 

 based on the crystaUine form and optical qualities 

 of substances, which can be used under the micro- 

 scope. ' Spezial-karte von Africa^ (Habenicht, 



Domann, and Liiddecke). This map, published by 

 Justus Perthes in Gotha on the occasion of the 

 centennial of the foundation of that house, is being 

 made under the dhection of Hermann Habenicht, 

 Bruno Domann, and Dr. Eichard Liiddecke. It 

 will be published in ten parts on a scale of 1 : 

 4,000,000. 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



Chaff AUJON writes from Ciudad-Bohvar of his 

 recent journey to the upper Orinoco and Cauca 

 rivers. He was accompanied by Indian guides, 

 two from the Arig-ua tribe, an Arebato and a 

 Guagnungomo, the latter belonging to a tribe feared 

 for its valor and ferocity by all the people of the 

 region. The party passed without difficulty as far 

 as a Httle village near the Brazilian frontier, where 



