can any progress be made. This portion of the work is of high value, and the information it contains is nowhere else accessible, at least in the English language.
The remaining 400 pages are devoted to explaining the mode of investigating the fluids and tissues of organisms, etc. The author's method here is, first, to ascertain the normal conditions of tissues, organs, etc., and then to study diseased conditions, the pathological structure always more or less repeating the normal. As far as we have had an opportunity of judging, the translator's work appears to be well done.
The Depths of the Sea. By C. Wyville Thompson, LL. D., etc. London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 1873.
Certain new and very interesting results, in regard to the distribution of life, have been arrived at within the last few years, by dredging the bottom of the sea. Twenty years ago it was believed that at certain depths the greatness of the pressure, the lowness of the temperature, and the deficiency of light and aeration, made it impossible for life to subsist. The alleged cases of living creatures being drawn up from these great depths were discredited. The operations of cable-laying and cable-raising have, however, increased our familiarity with the bottom of the sea, and the improved manipulations have been turned to account in exploring its life. The result was, the establishment of the truth that there is an order of life belonging to the sea-bed in the profound abysess of the ocean. The recognition of this fact led to systematic attempts to carry on deep-sea explorations. In 1868 the steamer Lightning was placed by the British Government at the disposal of Dr. Carpenter and Mr. Wyville Thompson for the express purpose of submarine research, and the Porcupine was afterward assigned, for a more extensive series of surveys, to the same gentlemen, with the addition of Mr Gwyn Jeffreys, in the summers of 1869 and 1870. In the first of these cruises the greatest depth reached was 1,500 fathoms, but in the second they went to the depth of 2,500 or 3,000 fathoms. The present volume is a record of the results attained in these expeditions. It gives an account of the apparatus and instruments employed, of the forms of organization discovered, and much information regarding the physics of the ocean. It is splendidly illustrated and popularly written, with much humor, and the treatment, like the subject, is any thing but dry; it is a volume altogether worthy the interest and importance of its subject.
Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 23 Murray Street.
We call the attention of mechanics, engineers, manufacturers, and scientific students, to this able and valuable periodical, now in its eighth volume. It treats of the applications of science, constructions, mining, and technical processes, and gives the solid literature of these subjects from all sources. It is edited with excellent discrimination, and the bound volumes of the series would form a most useful cyclopaedia of recent authentic information upon the subjects to which it is devoted.
Historical Statement of the Business and Condition of the Mutual LifeInsurance Company, of New York, for Thirty Years, from 1843 to 1872.
The company did well to state, in the beginning of this pamphlet, that its matter is important; since, owing to the style in which it is presented, few will be likely to discover that fact in any other way. Its contents are put in the shape of a facsimile of the original statement, signatures and all, a form to which probably not one in a hundred will attach any special value, and that involves a useless waste of time and patience on the part of the reader. What policy-holders and the public want is clear and explicit information that is readily accessible, and this appears to be just what the insurance companies are unable or unwilling to furnish.
Hygiene: a Fortnightly Journal of Sanitary Science. New York: Putnam. Two dollars per year.
This is a publication that was much needed, for the first of all our interests, that of health, is the one concerning which people are most careless and indifferent. It is amazing the amount of ignorance displayed, even by cultured people, with regard to the
