100 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
discontinuance of the present War Department surveys west of the one- 
hundredth meridian ; of the geographical and geological surveys now in 
progress under the Department of the Interior; and of the land surveys 
under the Land Office. 
These changes will bring within the Department of the Interior three 
distinct organisations — the Coast and Interior Survey ; the United States 
Geological Survey ; and the Land Office}; and with this division the report 
considers that a perfect co-operation between the three branches should be 
secured, the work of each department being immediately available to the 
others. Each of the three organisations will make an annual report of its 
operations to the Secretary of the Interior, but besides this annual report the 
Coast and Interior Survey will publish its geodetic results, geographical, 
topographical, and cadastral maps, coast charts, &c., while the publications 
of the Geological Survey will include geological and economic maps, and 
reports upon general and economic geology, with the necessarily connected 
palaeontology, and it is recommended that if the collections made by these 
departments are no longer required for the investigations in progress they 
should be transferred to the National Museum. 
The report also recommends that of the publications of the Coast and 
Interior and the Geological surveys, besides the copies which may be ordered 
by Congress for its own distribution, three thousand copies be printed for 
scientific exchanges, and for sale at the price of publication — advice 
which it would be gratifying to see followed in some of our own scientific 
departments. 
MINERALOGY. 
Manganosite . — This curious mineral, first described by Blomstrand, of 
Lund, has recently been subjected to a closer examination by Klien. It 
occurs in dark coloured irregular grains enclosed in granular calcite ; and, 
according to Blomstrand, they have a deep emerald-green hue, while by trans- 
mitted light they appear to have a ruby-red colour. The new species is of 
interest from its consisting of manganese protoxide ; the occurrence in nature 
of so unstable a compound is remarkable. A freshly-fractured surface after 
exposure to the air for a few weeks becomes covered with a brown layer of 
oxide. Klien states that the mineral is cubic, and exhibits a fine dark green 
colour both by reflected and by transmitted light ; and he has arrived at the 
conclusion that the red colour observed by Blomstrand was an effect of 
oxidation. The granules of manganosite, sometimes 1 cm. in diameter, are 
imperfectly formed octahedra. The forms produced by etching the crystals 
are four-sided pyramids with quadratic base . — Jahrbuch fiir Mineralogie , 
1878 , 750 . 
Iodobromite. — The <( Schone Aussicht ” mine at Dernbach, near Montabaur, 
in the province of Nassau, which during the last few years has yielded fine 
specimens of beudantite and crystallised scorodite, has again attracted the 
attention of mineralogists from the fact that Von Lasaulx has recently found 
there a mineral which is not only curious as being the first compound of 
silver met with in that locality, but as new to science, and of peculiar interest 
