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LITERARY NOTICES.
135

number will contain from sixty to one hundred pages, and the subscription price will be $3 a year.

Talks with Socrates about Life. Translations from the Gorgias and the Republic of Plato. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 173. Price, $1.

The character of the dialogues from which these selections are taken is too well known to require any special notice here. The text is preceded by an introductory analysis of the purpose of the "Talks" and accounts of the interlocutors, and is followed by annotations. The conversation is described as relating to the perpetual controversy between the material and the ideal, and concerning the real original existence of the moral law.

United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Report of the Commissioner for 1884. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 1204.

Besides its usual routine work, the commission directed a number of special undertakings, all of which are fully described in the report and the accompanying papers. Among them were the prosecution of the work on the pier, buildings, etc., at Wood's Holl; the construction of oyster-ponds at Wood's Holl and St. Jerome, and the investigation of the oyster-beds of Chesapeake Bay; the trip of the Albatross to the Caribbean Sea; the investigation of the Florida shad-fisheries, and the examination of the oyster-beds in Long Island Sound; the investigation of the fish-epidemic in Wisconsin lakes; the collection of specimens of cetaceans; the occupation of stations at Fort Washington on the Potomac, and at Weldon, North Carolina; efforts to hatch the codfish at Wood's Holl; the planting of lobsters in Chesapeake Bay; and the importation of the blue carp and of the European trout. The Appendix, which forms most of the volume, and is devoted to special papers and reports in full, contains the reports of steamers (the Albatross and FishHawk) and stations; fifteen papers of a general or statistical character on the fisheries of this country and Northern Europe; five papers on fish-culture, including a long one, by Carl Nicklas, on pond-culture; a series of statements from persons immediately engaged on some results of carp-culture in the United States; and papers on oyster-culture; five papers detailing scientific investigation; a statement by G. Brown Goode, of the status of the commission in 1884, etc.

Recent Advances in Meteorology. By William Ferrel. Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 440.

This hand-book constitutes the second volume of the report of the Signal Service for 1885. It aims to present the principles of meteorological science and their applications as they have been developed up to this time, for the use of students, and especially for the purposes of a text-book to be used in the Signal-Service school of instruction at Fort Meyer, Virginia. The effort has been made to select, from the material on hand, that which bears most usefully upon practical meteorology. The mass of matter was, however, found to be too large to be compressed into a volume of the size this was intended to be, and selection was necessary. Plain clews are, nevertheless, given to all facts and observations not directly discussed in the book, by references to the works and papers in which they are treated of. Many researches and problems are subjected to mathematical treatment; and an important feature of the work is found in the formulæ and tables which are so frequently needed in meteorological computations and discussions of observations, with examples for their application.


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Analyses and Commercial Values of Commercial Fertilizers and Chemicals. Atlanta, Ga. Pp. 13.

Nelson, N. O. Profit-Sharing. St. Louis, Mo. Pp. 40.

The Annual Index to Periodicals for 1886. London: Trubner & Co. Pp. 27.

Annual Report of the California State Mineralogist for 1836. Two vols. Sacramento, Cal. Pp. 141 and 222.

Report of the Alabama Weather Service. Auburn, Ala. Pp. 7.

Report of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for 1886. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor. Pp. 168.

Report of the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station. Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Company. Pp. 136.

Putnam, Samuel P. The New God. New York: Truth-Seeker Company. Pp. 31.

Brinton, Daniel G. . M. D. . Philadelphia. Critical Remarks on the Editions of Diego de Landa's Writings. Pp. 8.