Recent Books and Pamphlets

Mr. W. 0. Crosby presents the results of his studies on the mountain-reefs of eastern Cuba, of which an abstract will be printed' in our geographic columns. Mr. J. Tatlock, jun., discusses the variation of barometric measurements with the season. Various reports and proceedings fill about half of the hundred pages. The club's growth in popularity, as shown by its rapidly increasing meinbership of both sexes, has by no means diminished the scientific value of its publications.-The general catalogue of the American exhibit at the London fisheries exhibition, referred to on a previous page, and which is now in course of publication , will be followed by a series of special catalogues of the more important sections, which will contain much fresh information regarding the distribution , abundance, and relationships of the species exhibited. The handbooks of two sections-that of the birds, by Mr. Ridgway; and that of the invertebrates , by Mr. Rathbun-are now in press.-It may not be generally known that Harvard college observatory took an important part in the early experiments made in astronomical photography. Under the direction of Prof. W. C. Bond, the first daguerrotype of a fixed star, and many early representations of other objects, were obtained there. After the invention of the collodion process, Prof. G. P. Bond returned to the subject, and obtained an interesting series of photographs of various celestial objects. While stars of the first maginitude only could be depicted by the daguerrotype, the new process rendered it possible to photograph stars of the fourth. Professor Bond paid special attention to the means afforded by photography for the accurate measurement of double stars. For this purpose he procured numerous photographs of the star Mizar (4 Ursae Majoris), which he afterwards measured micrometrically. The accuracy of the results was remarkable ; and the average discordance of the values obtained from the photographs taken on eight different eveninigs was only 0.3". The second part of vol. iii. of Aniales of the Mexican national museum is devoted to the following papers: 1. Continuation of the study upon the Piedra del sol, by Alfredo Chavero; Glossary of Cas-tilian words derived from the Mexican, or Nahuatl, by Jesus Sanchez; Mexican antiquities, by Ca'rlos Fernandez. In the list of Sr. Sanchez are more than two hundred words derived from the aborigiinal Mexican , a few of which are already in the vocabulary of the United States; and …