the fact that there was no native work which fully treated of and illustrated rapid methods of hill-shading, and it is now written not only to explain these and other methods now used, either separately or in conjunction with them, but also to present the subject of topographical sketching in a form suited to a beginner."
The book is divided into two chief parts, topographical drawing and topographical sketching. The first is the exact reproduction, while the second is a more ready and quick, although not so exact, reproduction of the ground. The twenty-four plates form a very complete collection of all the instruments used by the surveyor and the draughtsman; they are very valuable, and contain, besides examples of work, conventional signs, hill-shading as executed on maps in this country and abroad, conventional tints, and projections for maps of large areas. The first nineteen plates are devoted to drawing, while the other five illustrate the instruments and methods used in sketching. Although sketching is not so exact and accurate as topographical drawing, it is, nevertheless, in many cases desirable to have the sketches as accurate as it is possible to obtain them. All the resources of modern science are called to help to assist in obtaining this desired result. Among these, photography also plays a not unimportant part.
It would be difficult to say whether the text has been written to explain the plates, or whether these have been made in order to illustrate the text. The two are so necessary to each other that they could not be separated.
Lieutenant Reed's work can not fail to recommend itself both to the beginner and to the veteran topographer. Even those whose special study is not in this line, will find it interesting in more than one respect.
Fourteenth Report of the Commisioners of Fisheries of the State of New York. Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co. Pp. 209.
In accordance with the spirit of the legislative act under which the commission was instituted, hatching-stations have been established on the Hudson River for shad; at Caledonia, Livingston County, for the propagation, principally, of the trout kind—with a source of supply at Rochester for black bass, perch, pike, banded perch, and bull-head; at Cold Spring Harbor for anadromous fish, trout, and sea-fish; at Lake Brandon, Franklin County (Adirondack hatchery), for fish of the trout kind; and at Clayton, Jefferson County, for salmon, trout, white-fish, rainbow-trout, and perch-pike. The total production from 1870 to 1886, at the two stations in full operation (Caledonia and Cold Spring Harbor), was 102,549,624 of all kinds. The details of operations at the several stations, minutes of the proceedings of the Board of Commissioners, and the reports of game and fish protectors and protection societies, are given in the report.
The Age of Electricity. From Amber-Soul to Telephone. By Park Benjamin, Ph. D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, $2.
The chief wonders of the modern world are the marvelous applications of electricity which have recently appeared in quick succession. To those who would have an intelligent knowledge of what has been done in this field, and would understand, in some measure, how it has been arrived at, this book is addressed. It is a book to be read rather than one to be studied, although, in a work describing any of the peculiar manifestations of electricity there must be passages which require the reader's close attention, unless he is content to pass them by. Not many pages are needed for sketching the electrical discoveries made before 1820, of which the most important were galvanism, and Franklin's demonstration that electricity and the lightning are identical. The author then takes up the chief topics of his subject singly, describing, in successive chapters, the galvanic battery, the electro-magnet, the dynamo-electric machine, the electric light, electro-motors for land, water, and aërial use, electro-deposition of metals, and the storage-battery, the telegraph, including multiple and autographic telegraphy, the telephone, and the induction-coil, closing with a chapter on applications of electricity to the arts of war, railroading, medicine, dentistry, music, domestic economy, etc. In the chapter on the telephone, are described the microphone and the phonograph; also the instrument
