Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/575

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
LITERARY NOTICES.
561

House-Drainage. By William Paul Gerhard. New York: Durham House-Drainage Company. Pp. 44. Sanitary Drainage of Tenement-Houses. By William Paul Gerhard. Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company. Pp. 40.

In the former work, the essential features of any thorough system of house-drainage are laid down to be: Extension of all soil and waste pipes through and above the roof; provision of a fresh-air inlet in the drain at the foot of the soil and waste pipe systems; the trapping of the main drain outside of the fresh-air inlet, to exclude the sewer-gases from the house; provision of each fixture, as near as possible to it, with a suitable trap; and provision of vent-pipes to such traps under fixtures as are liable to be emptied by siphonage. In the second pamphlet, the principles of thorough sanitary drainage are applied to the tenement-houses of working-men.

Annual Report of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for 1883. S. W. Johnson, Director. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor. Pp. 120.

The Board of Control of this institution report that the people of the State use the station more and more each year, and that the problem becomes more difficult how best to do the varied work asked for. To provide additional force. Dr. E. H. Jenkins has been appointed vice-director. Two hundred and nineteen analyses of fertilizers have been performed, fifteen of milk, three of butter, with negative results as to adulterations, and twenty of fodders. In connection with the last is given a table showing the average composition of American fodders and feeding-stuffs, compiled from all analyses that could be secured up to the 1st of September last. The chief seed-examinations were on onion-seed.

The Glacial Boundary in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. By Professor G. Frederick Wright. Cleveland, Ohio: Western Reserve Historical Society. Pp. 86.

The author began, ten years ago, investigations concerning the kames of the Merrimac Valley in Eastern Massachusetts. Continuing along the line, he has now traced the boundary of the glaciated area from the Atlantic Ocean to the southern part of Illinois. In the present pamphlet, the boundary is described in detail through the several counties and townships of Ohio, with local maps, and as to its general features through Kentucky—so far as it reaches that State—and Indiana.

Real and Imaginary Effects of Intemperance. By G. Thomann. New York: The United States Brewers' Association. Pp. 167.

The brewers have at last entered upon an active defense of their calling, against the assaults of the prohibitionists and the temperance orators, and in this pamphlet present their case and an appeal to facts and statistics. They claim that the arguments that have been hurled against fermented liquors are largely the offspring of the imagination, and do not rest on any solid foundation, or on what can be proved; and they publish counter statements and statistics favoring their own side. Leaving distilled liquors to take care of themselves, if they can, they contend that the beverages in which they are interested are wholesome, and are not instigators of crime, and that the use of them serves as a foil and a check to indulgence in stronger liquors; therefore it ought not to be discouraged.

Mineralogy. By J. H. Collins, F. G. S. Systematic and Descriptive Mineralogy. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Vol. II, pp. 329. Price, $1.25.

The present volume of Mr. Collins's "Mineralogy" is intended to accompany and supplement the first volume, which was published in 1878; and, like that, was written for the use of "practical working miners, quarrymen, and field geologists," as well as of students. The accounts are very brief, but they are clear, and illustrated with distinct drawings of the crystals, and include notices of all the minerals that had been described up to the time of the author's leaving England for Rio Tinto, Spain, in 1881.

Report of the New York State Survey for 1883. James T. Gardiner, Director. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing-House. Pp. 182, with Six Maps.

The work of the survey was continued through last year in accordance with the matured plan on which it has all the time