nature of wave-motion through solid bodies. Two epicentrums were found—one near Woodstock, about sixteen miles northwest of Charleston, the other almost due west of the city and about thirteen miles distant. In the investigation of the tracts around these points Captain Dutton gives high praise to the labors of Mr. Earle Sloan, of Charleston. The paper occupies three hundred and twenty-eight pages, and is copiously illustrated with views of ruined buildings, displaced tracks on the railroads, fissures and craterlets in various places, and with maps and diagrams. Prof. N. S. Shaler contributes to this volume a report on The Geology of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, comprising the general structure of the district, its superficial geology, the structure and nature of the bed-rocks, and the relations of the region to the anticlinal axis of which it forms a part. This paper also is fully illustrated. There is an account of the Formation of Travertine and Siliceous Sinter by the Vegetation of Hot Springs, prepared by Walter H. Weed, which is illustrated with many views of the springs in the Yellowstone National Park. The volume includes also a report On the Geology and Physiography of a Portion of Northwestern Colorado and Adjacent Parts of Utah and Wyoming, by Charles A. White, containing maps and diagrams.
English Prose: Its Elements, History, and Usage. By John Earle, Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 530. Price, $3.50.
To [[Category:]]give a brief though incomplete characterization of this work, it may be called a book on rhetoric, but it is deeper and broader than such a description would imply. The first chapter deals with choice of expression, giving parallel lists of words of Anglo-Saxon, of French, and of classical origin, and pointing out the principles which should guide a writer in using one or another of these synonyms in a given place. Some of the higher grammatical considerations are next discussed, after which the author passes to the bearing3 of philology on the writing of English prose. These chapters, with a short one on "mechanical appliances"—i. e., capitals and punctuation marks make up what the author calls the analytic portion of the treatise. The subject is next treated synthetically in five chapters. The first two of these deal with the leading characteristics of prose diction—elevation, lucidity, variety, novelty, and figure being enumerated under this head. Separate chapters are devoted to idiom and to euphony, and a discussion of style closes this portion of the volume. A brief history of English prose follows. This history is divided into three periods: the first extends from the eighth century to what the author calls the first culmination of English prose in the tenth, and the second ends in the fifteenth century. A closing chapter, entitled The Pen of a Ready Writer, is a good sample of the whole book. Under this head the author affirms that "it is not an easy matter to write English prose that is worth reading." A great number of rules, directions, and cautions are to be considered, he says; but the mind of the writer should not be burdened with a consciousness of these rules at the time of writing. Next after rudimentary grammar and the reading of good authors, philology is the preparation required for writing English. The writer should strive to gain command of the wealth of the English vocabulary. As to classical training, he takes the ground that it is excellent for some purposes, but not for forming an English style. He recommends a study of the English prose of the tenth century, and notes with approval a tendency of current writers to select their leading words from the true mother tongue. The severe drill in choosing words which is enforced by the writing of poetry is a good preparation for writing prose. The volume has an index to quotations, but no general index.
Biological Lectures delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Wood's Holl. Boston: Ginn & Co. Pp. 250.
All but two of the ten lectures in this volume were delivered during the summer of 1890. They are published as a contribution to educational literature, and as a means of making known the needs and possibilities of biological work to the patrons of the laboratory and to the general public. One important purpose of this course of lectures was, as stated by Prof. C. O. Whitman in the preface, "to bring specialists
