TWENTY-FIVE-CENT DINNERS FOR FAMILIES

OF SIX. By JULIET CORSON, Office of the
New York Cooking-School, 35 East
Seventeenth Street, Union Square. 72
pages. Price, 15 cents.

MISS CORSON has published various useful books on the subject of cookery, and, among others, a little brochure entitled "Fifteen-Cent Dinners for Working-Men's Families." This attracted a good deal of attention, and set many people to thinking about the possibilities of living cheaply and well, if they only knew how to do it. Having thus raised the question of economical diet in a practical way, Miss Corson was applied to by letters from numerous parties to show what could be done on a little more liberal scale of expense, and "Twenty-fiveCent Dinners" is the result. There is a large amount of valuable, well-digested information in this pamphlet. Miss Corson not only speaks from experience, both in cooking and teaching (as she is superintendent of the New York Cooking-School), but from a special study of culinary economics, or how to get good food in sufficient allowance at the lowest cost. Her results will excite some surprise in people of careless habits in these matters, and who would be astonished to be told that good cookery would give them better diet than they are in the habit of getting, at half the cost. Miss Corson begins with some serviceable hints on marketing, and the economical selection of articles of food, and then offers various valuable suggestions on the best methods of cooking to make them go the farthest. Several chapters follow of well-selected receipts for economical dishes, and the whole is fully indexed at the close. Besides her suggestive preface, addressed "To Economical Housewives," she offers at the outset the daily bills-of-fare for one week, with the

three daily meals, and the total meals of the week. The dishes are wholesome, attractive, and by no means stinted, and their very moderate cost conveys an instructive lesson to lax and thriftless housekeepers. Miss Corson's little work is opportune in these stringent times, and its wide circulation would be productive of much public benefit.

BULLETIN OF THE MINNESOTA ACADEMY OF

NATURAL SCIENCES (1877). Minneapolis: Young & Winn print. Pp. 126. Price, 50 cents.

THIS number of the Bulletin contains, besides the annual address of the president, a report on the "Mycological Flora of Minnesota," another on "Ornithology," a paper on "Tornadoes and Cyclones," and the Curator's "Report." The additions to the Academy's Museum were larger in 1877 than in any previous year, besides being much more valuable.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Report of the Commissioner of Education

(1876). Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 1152.

The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States. Parts 3, 4, 5. Illustrated by Chromolithographs. Boston: L. Prang & Co. 50 cents each.

New Encyclopædia of Chemistry. Parts 31 to 35 inclusive. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 50 cents each.

The Dance of Death. By W. Herman. New York: American News Company. Pp. 131.

In the Wilderness. By C. D. Warner. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. Pp. 176.

Dosia. By H. Greville. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. Pp. 260. $1.50.

Eclipse of July, 1878.
Instructions for observing the Total Solar
Washington: Govern-
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 30, with Plates.
tion (1878). Madison: Atwood print. Pp. 150.
Report of the Wisconsin Dairymen's Associa-
Sound and the Telephone. By C. J. Blake,
M. D. Pp. 14.

D. From American Journal of Insanity. Pp. 36.
True and False Experts. By E. Gissom, M.
Report of the New York Meteorological Ob-
servatory (1877). New York: Lees print. Pp.

32.

Follies of the Positive Philosophers. By T

Twenty-five Cent Dinners for Families of Six. By J. Corson. Pp. 72. 15 cents.

Separation and Subsequent Treatment of Precipitates. By F. A. Gooch. From "Proceedings of the American Academy." Pp. 8.

Vortrag über den Mexicanischen CalenderStein. Von Prof. Ph. Valentine. New York: Marrer und Sohn. Pp. 33, with Plates.

Instinctive Operations of the Human System. By J. F. Hibberd, M. D. Cincinnati: Lancet

print. Pp. 16.

Malaria and Struma. By L. P. Yandell, M. D. From American Practitioner. Pp. 15.

Honest Money. By T. M. Nichol. Chicago: The Honest Money League of the Northwest. Pp. 56.

Report of the Board of Schools, St. Louis (1876-77). St. Louis: Daly & Co. print. Pp. 280.

Notes from the Chemical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University. Nos. 9--12.

Duty of Literary Men. By Rev. T. A. Goodwin. New York: Burnz & Co. Pp. 16. Spelling Reformer. Vol. I., No. 5. publishers. Pp. 6.

Same

The Currency. By J. Johnston. Chicago: Honest Money League of the Northwest. Pp. 38. Physical Exercise and Consumption. By Dr. R. B. Davy. Cincinnati: From the Lancet and Observer. Pp. 16.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The Recent Solar Eclipse.-The telegraphic reports from the various stations for observing the solar eclipse of July 29th are of necessity meagre and confused. The atmospheric conditions were eminently favorable along the line of totality, indeed in the whole region west of the Mississippi, while throughout the East clouds generally concealed the phenomenon from view. Dr. Henry Draper, stationed at Rawlins, Wyoming Territory, took four photographs of the corona, two of them with his large spectroscope. These latter are declared to be 'very sharp and full of detail." This is a very fortunate circumstance, for it will enable scientific men to ascertain the precise truth touching a very important difference between the observations of Dr. Draper and those of the other astronomers. Dr. Draper reports that he finds the corona spectrum marked with the usual Fraunhofer's lines of the sun's spectrum. These lines were not seen by the other observers, whether at the same station or at the many other stations in the track of the total eclipse. Mr. Lockyer, in a dispatch, says that "Newcomb's party

and Barker made careful search for dark

Young," he adds, "telegraphed that there were no lines observed in the ultra-violet at Denver." Again, most of the spectroscopic observers report the presence of bright lines in the coronal spectrum, Prof. Young seeing several bright bands, and in particular the Kirchhoff line 1447. This observation, too, is negatived by that of Dr. Draper, whose photographs of the corona exhibit none of these bright lines. The world of science will await with profound interest the minute examination of all these coronal photographs; the result will decide whether, in accordance with the almost unanimous opinion of physical astronomers, the corona is a self-luminous liquid or solid body, or only reflected sunlight.

Prof. Langley, stationed at Pike's Peak, Colorado, reports that he "saw the corona elongated ; " that it "resembled the zodiacal light." Further, that he "followed it a distance of twelve diameters of the sun on one side and three on the other." This observation, if confirmed (and we may observe that none of the other astronomers appear to have confirmed it), would go to prove an extension of the corona into space about five times greater than the highest estimate hitherto made. Search was made during the eclipse for an intramercurial planet. Herein only one of the observers, Prof. Watson, claims to have been successful: he reports having discovered an intramercurial planet, of magnitude four and a-half, in right ascension eight hours twenty-six minutes; declination north 18°. The solar protuberances were much less prominent than in most recent eclipses.

Prof. Colbert, of Chicago, stationed at Denver, Colorado, reports that his observations tend to show that the moon's path in the heavens lay a little farther to the southward than is indicated by the lunar tables, or else that the estimate of the moon's diameter is too large. Possibly both suppositions are correct. Of Edison's "tasimeter," Mr. Lockyer writes from Rawlins:

"The tasimeter, the new instrument on which Edison has been working unceasingly here, has proved its delicacy. During the eclipse he attached it to Thomson's galvanometer,

which was set to zero. When the telescope

carrying the tasimeter was pointed several degrees from the sun, the point of light rapidly

left the scale as the corona was brought upon the fine slit by which the tasimeter itself was protected."

Progress of the Electric Light.-Progress is being steadily made with the electric light, both in the sense of improving the apparatus needed for utilizing it and in finding for it practical application. In Paris the railway-station Gare St.-Lazare is now very effectively lighted with the aid of the instrument known as Lontin's distributing machine. The contrast between the pure,

clear white electric light and the dull-yellow gaslights in the surrounding streets is enough to convince the most skeptical of the superiority of electricity over gas as an illuminating agent. In the Lontin machine ordinary prepared carbon-wicks are employed, which are regulated by a Lontin burner: the light is remarkably steady, and the wicks burn in the open air without globes or shades of any kind. A strong objection to this machine, unfitting it for use in private houses, is the hissing noise it makes when in operation. The electric candle invented by Jobloshkoff is used for illuminating the Place de l'Opéra in the same city. Across the open area of the Place, and extending toward the new Avenue de l'Opéra, there is a double row of large lamp-posts down each side, each surmounted by a large cylindrical lamp of clouded glass, and containing twelve electric candles. The whole space is lighted as bright almost as day. As soon as a candle burns down, another is moved by mechanism into its place without much appreciable disturbance of the general effect. There is no flickering. The great drawback to the Jabloshkoff candle is its costliness, the illumination being as expensive as when gas is used.

Bathing as a Cause of Ear-Disease.-Inflammation of the middle ear, often resulting in chronic deafness, is a not infrequent consequence of bathing. The damage, according to Dr. Sexton, in the Medical Record, consists in the admission of water to the ear, either through the external auditory canal or the Eustachian tube. When water finds admittance to the former, if cold or salt, inflammation of the meatus alone may result; or, if violently injected, as in surfbathing, or long retained in the canal from

diving, the disease may affect the drumhead and middle ear. Whenever water is forced from the mouth and nostrils into the middle ear through the Eustachian tube, inflammation of the middle ear is almost sure to occur, even though the water be warm. According to the author, several thousand

severe cases of aural disease result annually from bathing in New York City alone. The bather, when in the surf, should take the water on his chest or back, with mouth and nostrils closed, and never presenting A firm the ear to the in-coming wave. pledget of cotton-wool in the ears is some protection.

The Carpet-Beetle.-Notices have appeared from time to time during the last four or five years of a new carpet-beetle said to be far more destructive than the familiar carpet-moth. This insect has been identified by Dr. J. L. Le Conte as Anthrenus scrophularia, a European species. A good account of it is given in the American Naturalist by Mr. J. A. Lintner, who has studied this insect attentively since its first appearance on our shores. The larva, he says, measures at maturity about threesixteenths of an inch in length, and it is in this stage of its existence that Anthrenus preys upon carpets. A number of hairs radiate from its last segment in nearly a semicircle, forming a tail-like appendage almost as long as the body. The front part of the body, which has no distinct head, is thickly set with short brown hairs and a few longer ones. Similar short hairs clothe the body. The body has the appearance of being banded in two shades of brown, the darker one being the central portion of each ring, and the lighter the connecting portion of the rings. Having attained its full larval growth, it prepares for its pupal change without forming a cocoon, but merely seeking some convenient retreat. Here it remains motionless until it has completed its pupation, when the skin is rent along the back and through the fissure the pupa is seen. A few weeks later the pupal skin is split down the middle of its dorsal aspect, and the brightly-colored wing-covers of the beetle are disclosed. Soon after their emergence from the pupal case during the fall, winter, and spring, the beetles pair and the

females lay their eggs for another brood of larvæ. The Anthrenus once introduced into a house quickly infests it in every part. Thus, in a house at Cold Spring, New York, which had remained shut up for twelve months, they "took complete possession from the cellar to the attic, in every nook and crevice of the floors, under matting and carpets, behind pictures, eating everything in their way." No effectual means of combating this insect pest has yet been discovered; they are said to "grow fat" on camphor, pepper, tobacco, turpentine, carbolic acid, and the other ordinary applications.

The Earthquake-Scare in North Carolina. Bald Mountain, in Western North Carolina, forming part of the Blue Ridge of the Alleghanies, has for two or three years been receiving a good deal of attention in the newspapers. Rumbling noises have now and then been heard in the mountain, and these were by the people of the surrounding country taken to be conclusive evidences of volcanic action. As is usual in such cases, these actual phenomena were magnified enormously by the popular imagination, and to them were added others which had no objective existence. Prof. Clarke, of the University of Cincinnati, having devoted the early days of his summer vacation this year to investigating the causes of these rumblings, declares, in a letter to the New York Tribune, that "Bald Mountain is no more an earthquake centre than is Central Park," and that "it is merely a locality in which some large rock-slides of an exceedingly gradual character are going on." Nevertheless, the mountain is an object well worthy of study.

It forms one side of a pass through the Blue Ridge, Chimney Rock forming the

other. While the latter mountain is made up of smooth sheets of what appears to be gneiss, Bald Mountain is all over cracked and fissured, the fissures in some places forming large caves. The recent disturbances have chiefly affected a low spur of the mountain, rising about one thousand feet above the valley. From below the appearance is as if the whole side of the spur was sliding down.

Prof. Clarke first climbed up the side of this spur to a cave which had been

discovered a very short time previously. Here he found himself below a precipitous mass of rock two or three hundred feet high, at the foot of which immense numbers of fallen bowlders had formed crevices and caves innumerable. But the new cave was the largest of all. The floor of the cave was everywhere covered with fallen rocks. The newspaper accounts tell of powerful

currents of ice-cold air" issuing from the caverns; but Prof. Clarke found no strong currents, and a difference of only four degrees of temperature between the inside and the outside air. The "smoke of the Bald Mountain volcano" is not smoke

Prof.

at all, but fine dust formed by the grinding and clashing of the rocks. Clarke next visited "the Crack," a crevice very probably of quite recent origin. This is merely a rent in the rock about one hundred feet in length, seventy-five in depth, and nowhere over ten in width. The explanation given of these cracks and the noises is found in the geological constitution of the mountain, which is built up of sheets of an easily decomposable gneiss, inclined at a slight angle and sliding downward. These sheets of gneiss are full of cracks running at approximately right angles to the pseudo-stratification. The caves are merely spaces which have been left when an upper sheet of rock has slidden off and become inclined against a lower. Nowhere is any sign of volcanic action to be seen. As for earthquakes, the surrounding country is as free from them as any other in the whole country. Prof. Clarke accounts as follows for the rumbling noises: The rocks, as we have seen, are cracked across their stratification.

When a large sheet of gneiss is gradually sliding down, there comes eventually upon

some part of it a strain sufficient to produce a fracture. This breaking is, of course, attended by a noise, to which the immense caves and crevices serve as resounding chambers.

zones), and the steppe. The peculiarities of each of these are described by a writer in the Geographical Magazine, who derives his information from authentic sources. Of the tundras, those bare, damp, arctic wastes, mostly situated between the arctic circle and the polar ocean, he says that in winter they are frozen, and that in summer they thaw to the depth of a foot or so. The tundra area is about 144,820 square miles, and almost the sole vegetable productions are turf-moss and reindeer-moss. This region does not promise ever to be of any considerable economic value. The forest zone extends from the limit of trees southward to 60° north latitude, and embraces the greater part of Finland, the governments of Olonetz, Vologda, most of Archangel, and the northern districts of Novgorod, Vyatka, and Perm. Area, 815,790 square miles. Population, between thirteen and fourteen souls per square mile. The economic products are fur, timber, tar, and potash. The four northern governments of Archangel, Vologda, Olonetz, and Uleaborg, cannot expect ever to attain a much higher degree of cultivation | than at present. The inhabitants prefer the chase to agriculture, and devote only three months in the year to the latter. The agricultural zone extends from the sixtieth parallel to the steppe. Of this zone, the northern and central portions are a diluvial deposit, forming a thin, sandy soil that requires plentiful manuring; but the southern zone, the "black-earth" region, yields rich harvests without manuring or labor. Thus this zone may be divided into two belts, northern and southern. The northern belt includes fifteen entire governments and parts of others, with a total area of 371,900 square miles; average population fifty-four to the square mile. The region yields too little wheat for the support of its inhabitants, i. e., of the minimum allowance, 2.3 chetverts per head, only 1.7 chetvert is produced at home. The industrial wealth of Russia is mostly confined to this northern agricultural zone, the centre of manufacturing industry being the government of Moscow. The forests are gradually being diminished, through supplying fuel to carry on these industries, and there is the same improvident waste of timber which is to be

seen in our backwoods.

The output of coal in the Moscow district rose from 1,500,000 puds in 1860 to 9,000,000 puds in 1872; in the same year the Polish yield was 17,500,000 puds. The coal-deposits on both sides of the Ural, though rich and easily worked, are only used for the neighboring iron and copper works. The southern agricultural zone is so destitute of timber that the only fuel obtainable there, besides the droppings of cattle, is dry, half-wooded grain-stalks. The total area of the "black earth" is estimated at 250,760 square miles, extending over twenty-two governments, eight of which belong to the steppe region. In addition to these, six of the West Russia governments and Poland are noted for their fertility. The wheat produced in the black-earth country amounts to more than two-thirds of Russia's total yield, while potatoes are chiefly grown in the Polish and Baltic provinces. The population of the black-earth region forms 53 per cent. of the entire population of the country, and its crops 68 per cent. of the total yield. The manufacture of sugar from the beet is carried on extensively in the Kiev government. The crying want of this region is good roads. The chief vegetation found on the steppe is grasses, spiniferous and leafless plants, bulbous plants, etc. Forest-growth and cultivation are found only near the rivers; fuel is very scarce. The population of the steppe zone is very sparse, and the chief dependence of the inhabitants is on their cattle. In the south and southeast portions of the empire horses are bred in great numbers. The steppe zone is also rich in oxen and sheep. The grape is cultivated here to a considerable extent. Southern Russia is furthermore the chief source of salt-supply to the other governments of the empire.

Meteorological Notes.-Prof. Loomis's ninth paper on meteorology in the American Journal of Science and Arts for July is based on the observations of the United States Signal Service made between September, 1872, and October, 1874.

In tracing the rise and phenomena of the great storms which traverse the northern United States and British America, observations made at Portland, Oregon, were stud