tant treatises on meteorology; and other translations, giving the most recent and trustworthy results, are in course of execution. The special indications for particular localities have been largely increased. Of the "general indications," from 82·6 to 87·3 per cent monthly were verified during the year; of the Pacific coast indications, from 76·7 to 92·3 per cent; of the cautionary offshore signals, 93·6 per cent for direction, and 85·3 per cent for velocity; of the cold-wave signals, 86·2 per cent. Four hundred and eighty-nine stations were in operation on the 30th of June, 1885.
The Fall of Maximilian's Empire as seen from a United States Gunboat. By Seaton Schroeder, Lieutenant U.S.N. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 130. Price, $1.
"A letter-book and a log-book," says the author, "are the foundation upon which the fabric of this narrative rests." Lieutenant Schroeder was attached to the United States Steamer Tacony, Commander Roe, which was dispatched to Mexican waters in 1867, "to protect American interests" in those regions while the people were ridding themselves of the French and their Austrian mock-emperor. He was, therefore, more or less a personal observer of the events that occurred from that time till the intruders were finally expelled, and Maximilian was executed; and of all those transactions in which foreign agents could participate. Besides what he saw himself and heard from his intercourse with the officers of the fleets of other nations stationed in the same regions,"a scrutiny of various executive documents, departmental files, and volumes of diplomatic correspondence, has elicited from those musty sources certain interesting matters not presented in any history connected with the closing scenes of Prince Maximilian's short reign in Mexico." The result of the whole is a modest, straight-forward narrative which is a contribution to history.
Agriculture in some of its Relations with Chemistry. By F. N. Storer. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Two vols. Pp. 529, 509.
This book, the author says, has been written in the interest of persons fond of rural affairs, and of students of agriculture. It makes no special appeal to chemists or to students of chemistry. It is based upon lectures, suggestive rather than encyclopedic, which have been delivered annually by the author at the Bussey Institution during the past sixteen years (1871-1887). These lectures, which have been many times altered and revised, were addressed to small classes of students of two distinct types—viz., young farmers, and sons of farmers, familiar with the manual practice of agricultural operations, who were desirous of studying some of the sciences which bear most immediately upon the art of farming; and city-bred men, often graduates of the academic department of the university, who intended to establish themselves upon farms, or to occupy country-seats, or to become landscape-gardeners. The lectures are upon a considerable range of subjects, which may, perhaps, be only partly covered by such headings as the relations of soil, air, water, and the plant; tillage; manures (including the chemical action of the soil, the special manures in their variety, animal and vegetable refuse, green manuring, vegetable mold, farm-yard manure, composts, night-soil, etc.); rotation of crops; action of fire on soils; irrigation; sewage; the disposing of farms; various crops; and pastures. To such inspection as we have been able to give them, the practical value of the lectures appears high as compared with most other works of the class.
A quarterly journal is to be started at an early date, to be entitled the "American Journal of Psychology," and to be under the editorial control of G. Stanley Hall, Ph. D., of Johns Hopkins University. It will attempt to gather up and present, in a compact, accessible form, the results of scientific psychological research which are of value and are now widely scattered, and even have sometimes to be looked for in other departments of science. It will contain original contributions of a scientific character, recording experiments and studies in all branches of the subject; papers of importance from other journals; and digests and reviews, in which attempts will be made to give a conspectus of the more important psychological literature of the three months preceding publication. Each
