study of algebraic form that the modern developments of pure algebra, or its applications to geometry, can be rightly comprehended."
From the Department of Agriculture we have received Insects affecting Domestic Animals, an account of the species of importance in North America, by Herbert Osborne, Professor of Zoölogy and Entomology, Iowa Agricultural College. This report gives, in about three hundred pages, a description of all the parasites the stock raiser has to contend with. After an introductory chapter on parasites in general, the following six chapters deal with the various pests in detail. The seventh chapter tells of remedies and preventive treatment. Classified lists and a bibliography complete the pamphlet. The report represents the result of investigations carried on at intervals since 1885. In the words of L. O. Howard, entomologist to the department, it "will form an excellent textbook of the subject, and is a work which should be in the hands of all stock raisers." It is fully illustrated by plates and cuts.
Observations on the Fur Seals of the Pribiloff Island—Preliminary Report by David Starr Jordan, Commissioner in charge of Fur-seal Investigations for 1896—brings some interresting data as to the condition and the fishery of seals on a little cluster of islands in the Bering Sea. Under different headings it describes the islands, the rookeries, habits and breeding of the seal, and the different modes of killing, and their effects. A number of statistical tables put these difficult investigations on a scientifically accurate basis; and a map appended to the pamphlet locates the routes of the seal under way.
The February number of the Expositor, a theological magazine, opens with a rather searching criticism of Ian Maclaren's The Mind of the Master, by the Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. He points out what to him seem numerous errors of interpretation of the Gospels; and from his Anglican point of view the Rev. John Watson's broad if not exactly new proposition—that of substituting the Sermon on the Mount for the creeds of Christendom—would mean a giving over of Christianity altogether. Among the other papers of interest to lay readers may be mentioned Christian Perfection, by the Rev. Joseph Agar Beet; John's View of the Sabbath Rest, by the Rev. George Matheson; and The Priest of Penitence, by the Rev. E. N. Bennett. Among the reviews a large space is given to books on social topics. Two of these reviews are by Prof. Richard T. Ely, and one by Prof. William Adams Brown.
The Analytic Keys to the Genera and Species of North American Mosses, prepared by Charles M. Barnes, and published by the University of Wisconsin, is a new edition and enlargement of a Key to Genera published for free distribution in 1886, and Keys to Species published in 1890, and is intended to serve the same purpose as they—of furnishing a convenience to students rather than to present a critical study of North American mosses. It includes, therefore, a very large number of new species that have been described since 1890. For the benefit of amateurs, though specialists may not need them, collected descriptions are appended of all species not found in Lesquereux and James's Manual. The attempt is made to include all the species reported or described as belonging to our flora, unless later study of the genus has shown the addition to be untenable; and such special studies are cited in the Keys. Pains have been taken to include as many of the barren and insufficiently described species as possible, in order that they may be recognized, if they exist, or may be referred to their proper place. Varieties are not discriminated, but inquiry into the subject is suggested. The work of preparing this edition has been largely done by Mr. de F. Heald, with the co-operation of the author.
Prof. G. Frederick Wright's comprehensive and fully illustrated account of The Ice Age in North America, which first appeared in 1889, reached its fourth edition in 1896 (Appletons, $5). Detailed work upon the glaciated areas has been going on actively since the third edition came out, but Dr. Wright finds no occasion to modify materially his original statements, either of fact or of theory. In his preface to the new issue he gives a list of papers in which the results of this recent work have been embodied, accompanying it with notes on the
