Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/726

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
708
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

prime need of its students, science was represented by chemistry and anatomy in its earliest course of study, and rapidly increasing facilities have since been accorded to it. Amos Eaton lectured on chemistry and botany in the early years of the college. Prof. Snell, with a wonderful Yankee handiness in constructing apparatus, had charge of the teaching of physics for many years. The instruction of these men, together with that of Shepard in mineralogy, of Adams in zoölogy, of President Hitchcock in geology, and the younger Hitchcock in physiology, has enabled the students of Amherst to go forth into the world with some understanding of Nature, of which man is no longer ashamed to confess himself a part. The volume is generously illustrated with portraits of the several presidents, and views of the buildings and grounds of the college. An appendix contains a list of donations to the college, the number of faculty and students year by year, etc., and there is a full index. The book will appeal strongly not only to the alumni of Amherst but also to every New-Englander who is proud of the educational institutions of his native section and to friends of learning everywhere. A limited édition de luxe at five dollars is announced.

Three reprints, from the Transactions of the Fifth Session of the International Congress of Geologists held in Washington in 1891, are geological, geographical, and topographical descriptions of the Great Plains of the North and of the Yellowstone Park, by Arnold Hague; and a paper in French by Lester F. Ward, on the Principles and Methods of Study of Geological Correlation by Means of Fossil Plants.

Science Progress is a new monthly review of Scientific Investigation, published by the Scientific Press, Cambridge, England, and edited by J. Bretland Farmer, with the co-operation of a number of investigators, masters in their several fields. Profs. Armstrong, Burdon-Sanderson, Dunstan, Fitzgerald, Goebel, Halliburton, Ray Lankester, Roy, etc., are named as among the contributors to the earlier numbers. The articles are of high character, about midway between the popular and the technical—that is, within the understanding of the general reader, but requiring thoughtful attention.

Dolls of the Tusayan Indians is the subject of an interesting paper published originally in the Interriationales Archiv für Ethnographie, by J. Walter Fewkes. The dolls are illustrated in a series of striking pictures, colored like the originals, and described as examples of wood-carving and symbolism among the Hopis. This art, according to the priests, is very ancient; and many of the objects placed on the altars in subterranean chambers where secret rites were performed are said to have been brought up from the under-world when the ancients emerged from the si-pa-pu, or traditional opening in the earth out of which the races of man originally appeared. The images, often called idols, but in reality only dolls, are made in great numbers by the Tusayan Indians and present very instructive objects for the study of symbolic decoration. They are interesting as affording valuable information in regard to the Hopi conception of their mythological personages.

Recreation is a new monthly magazine "devoted to everything that the name implies," of which G. O. Shields is editor and manager, and which is published at 216 William Street, New York, for $1 a year. The first number contains a varied table of contents, of which the most striking articles are President D. S. Jordan's How the Trout came to California, and Captain H. H. Bellas's A Winter with the Cheyennes; and the illustrations are very attractive.

The second part of Clarence B. Moore's memoir on Certain Sand Mounds of St. John's River, Florida, represents the results of seven additional months' continuous work subsequent to the preparation of the first part, with a large body of assistants. The river has been covered practically from its source to its outlet, and the author believes that every mound of any importance bordering on the stream, except two on Murphy Island, has been examined. The descriptions are liberally illustrated with representations of the objects recovered from the mounds. A separate reprint is also published by Mr. Moore from the memoir, on the copper found in the mounds—As to the Copper from the Mounds of the St. John's River, Florida. In this paper are considered copper objects of European and of aboriginal design, the archaeological aspects of the finds, and the re-