aspects, both as regards the general town supply and also in reference to individual household filtration. The physical forces and forms with which we have to reckon are next considered under Rain, Ice, Snow, and River and Stream Water. In these chapters are considered the importance of a pure ice supply, the influence of forests on rainfall, and the proper care of a watershed. The care and purification of stored water is next discussed, such questions as the preparation of reservoir bottoms, growth of algae in stored water, covered reservoirs, and lake water being taken up. The important and much-disputed questions relating to ground water receive attention in chapter eight. Among the subtitles we find: Contamination by Privy Vaults, Testing Wells for Possible Contamination, Viability of Cholera and Typhoid Germs in Soil. The reliance to be placed upon Purification by Filtration through Soil, Deep-seated Water, including the driving of artesian wells, and related questions are next discussed. Then come two long chapters on the chemical and bacteriological examination of water, the quantity of per capita daily supply, and the very important question of the action of water on metals, especially its corrosion, and solution of iron and lead pipes, form the subject-matter of the two final chapters.
The book seems to be the result of much careful work, is up to date, not technical, and fairly comprehensive. It should be owned by local aldermen and trustees, and in fact every city official whose judgment may be called upon in deciding questions relating to public sanitation and water supply; even the average householder will find much of value and interest in it, and for the modern engineer and physician it seems quite an essential part of his library. Illustrations are numerous and well chosen.
The chapter in American history relating to the cowboy, says the editor of The Story of the West Series, introducing Mr. Hough's account of that singular character of the plains,[1] "demands preservation for reasons æsthetic and practical alike." It concerns a feature of American life that is passing away—has, in fact, almost passed away—never to be seen again. The story has found a competent teller in Mr. Hough, who is familiar with the cowboy's life and knows how to present its most salient features in their legitimate prominence. His book is remarkably vivacious and full of incident, and his accounts are picturesque, without his having ever found it necessary to exaggerate or descend to vulgar sensationalism. While the cowboy's life has, as the editor well says, been subjected to literary abuse, literary justice is done it in this story, which treats it soberly and dispassionately without detracting from the raciness which "indolent and unscrupulous pens" have sought to impart to it by invention. First is presented to the reader "the long range," or the cattle trail from the south to the north, on which so many herds were driven twenty years ago in search of the fattening grasses of the north, how it was opened and how developed; then the cattle ranch, in the south and in the north; the cowboy's outfit and his horse, the marks and brands that were put on cattle, the rules or customs that grew up or were enacted concerning the use of grass and access to water; the occupations and incidents of the cowboy's business of tending cattle, described in several chapters; "society in the cow country," and the elements that came in to modify or disturb it—the "nester" or settler who established farms in the land; the great herders who tried to monopolize the country and fence it in, and the way
- ↑ The Story of the Cowboy. By E. Hough. (Story of the West Series.) New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 349. Price, $1.50.
