War and Peace. A Historical Novel. By Count Léon Tolstoi. New York: W. S. Gottsberger. Two volumes. Pp. 322 and 357.
This work will command attention on account of the fame of the author, who, after having for a considerable time held an important official position under the Emperor of Russia, retired from public life and turned his attention to literature. He is now one of the most prominent Russian writers. The story relates to that period of the Napoleonic wars, from 1805 to 1807, which preceded the Peace of Tilsit, and introduces as actors several of the prominent characters of the time. The present edition is a double translation, the story having been first translated from Russian into French by a Russian lady, and then into English by Clara Bell.
Manual of the Botany of the Rocky Mountain Region. By John M. Coulter. New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co. Pp. 480.
"West of the Mississippi Valley prairie region," says the author of this "Manual," "there are three well-defined floras: One is that of the Pacific slope; another is Mexican in character, extending from the Great Basin to Arizona, New Mexico, Western Texas, and southward into Mexico; the third is the Rocky Mountain region, extending eastward across the plains to the prairies." The first floral region is descriptively provided for in two volumes on the "Botany of California"; the botany of the Great Basin is described in works by Sereno Watson and Dr. Rothrock. The third region was imperfectly described in Professor Porter's "Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado," a first attempt, published about ten years ago. The present volume is an attempt to furnish a more adequate presentation of the subject than could be given at that time, and to provoke still further advance and improvement. The range it is intended to cover includes Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Western Dakota, Western Nebraska, and Western Kansas. In it arc also included the larger part of the contiguous flora, running into the western part of the Indian Territory, Northwestern Texas, Northern New Mexico and Arizona, and Eastern Utah and Idaho, for all except their own peculiar plants. In Utah the range is carried westward by the Uintah and Wasatch Mountains, whose plants) arc intended to be included. This edition only claims to be a compilation, and an orderly arrangement and sifting of scattered material—an arrangement and sifting that were greatly needed, for much of the material was practically inaccessible.
Studies from the Biological Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore: Newell Martin, M.D., F. R. S., and W. K. Brooks, editors. Vol. iii, Nos. 1 to 4. Pp. 216, with Twelve Plates. Price per volume, $5. The price of single numbers varies with the size.
These studies, issued from time to time, contain the majority of the original scientific papers published by members of the Biological Department of the University. They will be grouped into volumes of about five hundred pages each. The numbers before us contain eleven papers, giving accounts of special researches into various facts of special structure and function. Among the papers of most general interest are those of Mr. W. n. Howell, on "The Origin of the Fibrin formed in the Coagulation of Blood," and of Mr. H. G. Beyer, "On the Action of Carbolic Acid, Atropia, and Convallaria on the Heart, with some Observations on the Influence of Oxygenated and Non-oxygenated Blood, and of Blood in Various Degrees of Dilution," both of which are in No. 2.
The Louisiana Purchase in its Influence upon the American System. By the Right Reverend C. F. Robertson, D.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 42. Price, 50 cents.
This paper, by the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Missouri, belongs to the series of the American Historical Association. The subject, as the author reviews it briefly, becomes a very broad one—much larger, probably, than most readers are at the beginning ready to suppose it to be. In the first place, the purchase was acknowledged to be extra-constitutional, but then no one, in Congress or out of it, could say anything about that matter while it was under settlement, for fear of giving France a pretext for withdrawing from the bargain. The
