structions to their full extent, although he started under the belief that they could not be accomplished.
Lieutenant Greely has his views of the constitution of the polar regions, and they are entitled to all the respect which the opinions of a man of intelligence who has had unusual opportunities for observation have a right to command. He does not doubt "that in the vicinity of the north and south poles are glacial lands entirely covered by ice-caps of enormous thickness, which throw off the huge floebergs of the north and the yet more remarkable flat topped icebergs of the south. The north polar land is, I believe, of limited extent, and its shores, or the edges of its glaciers, are washed by a sea which, from its size and consequent high temperature, its ceaseless tides and strong currents, can never be entirely ice-clad. . . . Far be it from me to advocate a navigable polar sea. On the contrary, I am firmly possessed with the idea that an ice-belt from fifty to a hundred miles wide borders the lands to the southward, and that the water-space to the northward can only be entered in extremely favorable years by the Spitzbergen route."
We had marked many passages illustrative of the monotonous life of the Arctic winters and its depressing and irritating effect upon the minds of the men; descriptive of the toilsome journey from Camp Conger to Cape Sabine, and of the attempt to cross Smith Sound; and incidents of the unprecedented sufferings of the party in their spring of cold starvation at Cape Sabine; but we have no space for them. The story, moreover, is not one that can be represented by incidents selected here and there, but should be taken in a whole. The headings of the closing chapters fittingly suggest its character. They are: "The Beginning of the End"; "The Last of Our Rations"; "The End—by Death and Rescue." Of the whole, Lieutenant Greely says: "No pen could convey to the world an adequate idea of the abject misery and extreme wretchedness to which we were reduced at Cape Sabine. Insufficiently clothed, for months without drinking water, destitute of warmth, our sleeping-bags frozen to the ground, our walls, roof, and floor covered with frost and ice, subsisting on one fifth of an Arctic ration, almost without clothing, light, heat, or food, yet we were never without courage, faith, and hope. The extraordinary spirit of loyalty, patience, charity, and self-denial—daily and almost universally exhibited by our famished and nearly maddened party—must be read between the lines in the account of our daily life penned under such desperate and untoward circumstances."
Easy Lessons in German. By Adolphe Dreyspring. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 103. Price, 70 cents.
The "Easy Lessons" is intended as an introduction to the author's "Cumulative Method," and to be adapted both to schools and to home instruction. It is designed not only for those who shun "full-grown" textbooks, and to whom price is a material consideration, but more especially for the boys and girls of the primary classes, to whose intellectual status it is better adapted than are the larger works. The aid of illustrations is freely called in to enforce the meaning of the nouns and verbs, so that each of the conventional lessons into which the work is divided is in fact a series of object-lessons. We regard the author's system, which consists of frequent repetition and the putting of the word or set of words, which is the particular subject of the lesson, through its varieties of combinations and changes, as an excellent one. The exercises are conversational, are made interesting and amusing, and are so directly to the point they are designed to enforce, that by the time the pupil is through with one of them, it is well impressed upon his mind, and not likely to be forgotten.
The Determination of Rock-forming Minerals. By Dr. Eugen Hussak. Authorized Translation from the German, by Erastus G. Smith, Ph. D. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 233. Price, $3.
This book is intended to supply a want long felt by students of mineralogy and lithology. It presents, in a shape adapted for use in the class-room and the laboratory, a digest of numerous articles bearing upon the subject, that have appeared in technical journals and other publications of various countries.
The first part of the work treats of the
