but it is far less complete and especially less sudden than that which they witnessed from El Kantara."

"In the Oasis of Biskara they met the finest of weather, 17° C. (=62° Fahr.) in the shade. The little hotel where they alighted is surrounded by a garden as fine and as green as in Switzerland in the month of July-the fig, mulberry, and pomegranate trees retaining still all their leaves which do not at all appear to be willing to fall yet. The vine still forms dense hedges, hanging full of enormous late grapes, and the pomegranate trees bend under the weight of their heavy fruits."

2. Mount Hope Nurseries, Rochester, N. Y.-In vol. xxxiii, p. 430, was published a short notice of Bonapartea juncea. The prospect of maturing some seeds was there mentioned. This proved to be reality. Near the upper part of the stem, seeds were found which, on being planted, germinated, and a few days since I saw there three young plants of the Bonapartea flourishing finely.

The head of the old plant slowly decayed, a part of the leaves fell off, no suckers or shoots have appeared, and by another summer the plant will have died.

It is now known, if not ascertained before, that the seeds of this plant will ripen in a warmed conservatory.

Many and splendid additions of exotics have been made by the proprietors. The air-plants, Tillandsia pulchella and linifolia, were in full bloom a few weeks since, growing upon a dry stick a few inches long, besides others of the Orchis family.

Rochester, N. Y., Sept. 1, 1863.

C. D.

3. The Chemical Chair in Berlin, made vacant by the lamented death of Mitscherlich, has been declined by Bunsen, who could not be induced to leave the circle of friends he has drawn about him in Heidelberg. Dr. Hofmann, of London, has since received the proffer of the place, but he it is said also hesitates, feeling himself, if he should conclude to leave London, under obligations to go to Bonn, where they have offered to place $100,000 at his disposal to organize a laboratory and school of science. It will be a matter of surprise if he is tempted to leave London for either place.

4. Prof. Watson's new Asteroid 9 Eurynome, was independently observed also by Temple at Marseilles on the 3d or 4th of October, at Leipsic on the 4th of Oct., and at Vienna Oct. 6th, which observations are published in Astr. Nachtr., Nos. 1440 and 1441. Prof. Watson's observations from Sept. 14 to Sept. 23 at Ann Arbor, are given in Astr. Nachtr., No. 1442, and in this Journal for November, 443. See also this number, p. 140.

5. Prof. OGDEN N. ROOD.-Prof. Rood, formerly of Troy University, and well known by his numerous able physical papers in this Journal, has lately been elected to the Chair of Physics in Columbia College, New York, and will enter upon his new duties at once.

BOOK NOTICES.

1. A Text-book of Geology; designed for Schools and Academies, by JAMES D. DANA. 356 pp. 12mo. Illustrated by 375 wood-cuts. 1864. Philadelphia, Theodore Bliss & Co. Price $1.75.

In the preparation of the Text-book the general plan of the "Manual

of Geology" has been followed. Geology has been treated as a history, a history of the geographical changes of the globe, or those of its continents and seas, through the successive ages, and also a history of the progress of life from the earliest species to Man; and the illustrations of the science have been mainly drawn from American rocks, so that the work, while a general treatise, is eminently a geological history of the American continent.

Although an abridgment of the "Manual," it is not a patchwork of extracts from it. The whole has been entirely rewritten and thrown into a new form, in order to adapt it to its special purpose and give it the unity of an independent work. It covers the same broad ground with the larger volume, exhibiting like comprehensive views of the science; but the facts and principles are presented in a briefer manner and a more simple style, and at the same time with full illustrations by means of sections, views, and figures of fossils.

The work is intended to meet the wants of schools, academies, and other literary institutions, and not less those of the general reader who would obtain a knowledge of geology without entering into its many details.

2. A Tract on Crystallography, designed for the use of students in the University; by W. H. MILLER, M.A., For. Sec. R.S., F.G.S., etc. 86 pp. 8vo. Cambridge, 1863.-This volume is properly an introduction to Prof. Miller's system of Crystallography, and will be welcomed by all students of his system. It contains an investigation of the formulæ for crystallographic calculations used in his method, together with some additional theorems on the general properties of crystalline forms.

3. Descriptions of the Fossil plants collected by Mr. George Gibbs, Geologist to the U. S. Northwest Boundary Commission under Mr. A. Campbell, U. S. Commissioner; by Dr. J. S. NEWBERRY. (From the Boston Jour. N. Hist., vol. vii.)-The plants here described were collected on Vancouver's Island, Orcas Island, and at Bellingham Bay, etc., on the coast of Washington Territory; and those of the first mentioned locality, including Aspidium Kennedyi N., a Sabal, undescribed, Taxodium cuneatum N., Populus rhomboidea Lsqx., and Ficus? cuneatus N., are from the Cretaceous, and perhaps also those of Orcas Island.

4. Reminiscences of Amherst College, Historical, Scientific, Biographical and Autobiographical, &c.; by EDWARD HITCHCOCK. Northampton, Bridgemain & Childs, 1863. 12mo, pp. 412. 4 plates and a map of the Geology around Amherst College. It was fit that the venerable ex-President of Amherst College should, as the closing labor of his long and laborious life spent in the service of education and science, record his personal reminiscences of the institution with which his name and fame are inseparably connected. The book is a reflex of the man-full of simple, almost childlike, earnestness, concealing nothing, not even his personal expenses. The reader sees without disguise all the springs and machinery by which, with admirable skill and patience, a well endowed and prosperous institution has been made to rise from the res angustæ domi, almost res adversa, of its unpromising beginnings. What Dr. Hitchcock has done for science in connection with the inception and growth of its various departments in Amherst is here made apparent, not by any boast

ful or self-laudatory statements, but inferentially from the simple thread of history.

On another occasion we may return to this volume for some valuable statistics of the scientific departments at Amherst. A full list of Dr. Hitchcock's numerous publications is given, amounting in all to no less than 171, of which 24 are distinct volumes and 69 are on scientific subjects.

5. Frick's Physical Technics.We cordially commend this book to all teachers of physics and especially to those whose situation or circumstances cut them off from access to a good collection of physical instruments. The arrangement of the book follows Müller's text book, many of the figures of apparatus being identical. While the most expert demonstrator may gain some useful hints from Dr. Frick's book, the less experienced teacher and student will find it an invaluable vade mecum in the physical laboratory. It is beautifully printed on tinted paper and Dr. Easter's translation is thoroughly good English.

I

6. Waitz's Introduction to Anthropology, translated from vol. 1 of the Anthropologie der Naturvolker, by J. T. COLLINGWOOD, F.G.S., F.R.S.L., and published for the Anthropological Society of London by Longman, Green, Longmans and Roberts.-This work sustains the idea of the unity of the human race. We have not yet seen a copy of it, but learn from the notices of it by reviewers that differ from the author in his conclusions, that it is a work of profound learning and thoroughness, and great fairness and philosophical acumen in the treatment of the subject. 7. Petroleum vein in Northwestern Virginia; by J. P. LESLEY. (From the Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. ix, 1863.)

OBITUARY.

HENRY FITZ.-The death of Mr. Henry Fitz has inflicted an almost irreparable loss upon that large class of scientific men whose apparatus is the product of the optician's skill, while those who knew him personally and appreciated his frank and generous character must feel that his vacant place cannot be filled.

It is not saying too much to assert that Mr. Fitz has done more to popularize Astronomy in this country than any other man. In former days good telescopes were only to be had by importation from Munich, at a cost and delay which amounted to a prohibition. Mr. Fitz, bringing to bear a rare mechanical skill, a wonderful ingenuity, and a hopeful enthusiasm which no obstacles could resist, placed within reach, at a moderate cost, iustruments of fine optical quality, while his practical and cheap equatorial mounting gave to every observer the advantages which were hitherto enjoyed only in fixed observatories with costly instruments.

Mr. Fitz was entirely a self-taught optician, and like his friend and coworker, Mr. Clark, of Cambridge, was indebted solely to his own ingenuity and reasoning powers for all his methods and manipulations. It is a

Physical Technics; or Practical instructions for making experiments in Physics and the construction of Physical Apparatus with the most limited means. By Dr. J. Frick, Director of the High School in Freiburg, and Professor of Physics in the Lyceum. Translated by John D. Easter, Ph.D., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in the University of Georgia. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1862. 8vo, pp. 467.

little remarkable that both of these American opticians were many years since independently conducted by their investigations to the method of local correction for optical surfaces; a method described lately in the French Academy by M. Leon Foucault, as a new discovery of his own, which he claims to be of the greatest importance to practical optics. It is not intended to impugn the originality of Mr. Foucault's discovery, but simply to record the priority of American invention-it is within the knowledge of the writer that Mr. Fitz used the method of local correction as early as the year 1846.

The largest telescope completed by Mr. Fitz was of the dialitic construction, having an aperture of 16 inches. It is mounted in the private observatory of Mr. Van Duzee, of Buffalo.

The principle achromatic telescopes made by Mr. Fitz are located as

follows:

One of 13 inches aperture at Alleghany City, Penn.

66 " 13

66 แ

66 66 9

83

66 66 8

66 66 8

66 66

66

66

66

66

66

66

Dudley Observatory. Albany, N. Y.
Ann Arbor, Michigan.

(not yet mounted) at the Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

the private Observatory of Mr. L. M. Rutherfurd, New York City.

U. S. Military Academy, West Point. private Observatory of Mr. Vickars, Balti

more.

belonging to the Hon. Mr. Letsome, British Chargé to Monte Video.

Elmira Female College, N. Y.

Haverford College, Penn.

private Observatory of Mr. John Campbell, New York City.

constructed for the U. S. Astr. Expedition

to Chili, and now there.

private Observatory of Mr. Robert Van Arsdale, Newark, N. J.

Mr. Fitz's optical labors were not confined to the production of telescopes, but almost immediately upon the announcement of the discoveries of Daguerre and St. Victor, he constructed cameras, and was, I believe, the first to produce a camera capable of working in a practical time for portraits.

At the time of his death he had just perfected a view lens of great merit, which compares most favorably with the justly celebrated globe lens of Harrison & Schnitzer.

Within the compass of a short notice it would be impossible to enumerate all the instrumental additions and simplifications for which the scientific world is indebted to Mr. Fitz, and perhaps it would not be in the power of any one person to recall them all: they could only be gathered from a comparison of the experience of those who knew and reaped the benefit of his fertile ingenuity, the achievements of which were rarely alluded to in his modest and unostentatious conversation.

Mr. Fitz has left with his bereaved family precious legacies of experience and material which it is hoped will enable them to continue his optical labors in a worthy manner.

PROF. E. EMMONS.-Died, at his plantation, in Brunswick, N. C., October 1st, 1863, Professor EBENEZER EMMONS, M.D. Born in Middlefield, Mass., in 1798, he was graduated at Williams College in the class of 1818. He studied medicine and received the degree of M.D. from the Berkshire Medical School in 1830. In his Alma Mater he was Professor of Natural History from 1833 to 1859, and was then appointed to the chair of Mineralogy and Geology. While a member of college, his studies were directed towards the departments of natural science by attending the lectures of Prof. Amos Eaton, who then began that course of lecturing and teaching by which so many hundreds of young men were made active lovers of natural history, an era in which this science had its beginning in our country. When the geological survey of the state of New York was commenced, Dr. Emmons was appointed one of the four geologists between whom the State was divided into four great sections; and to him was assigned the N.E. portion of the State on the coast of Lake Ontario and south to the counties of Herkimer, Lewis and Saratoga, as the divisions were in 1842, when his report was published. Dr. Emmons removed from his home in Massachusetts to Albany, that he might be in the centre of the great geological survey. There he was made a Professor in one of the chairs of the Albany Medical College. To his Geological Report, he added successive reports on the agriculture of the State. At length he was appointrd to the Geological Survey of North Carolina by its Governor. He prosecuted that survey with great industry and success, and made several important discoveries of unknown fossils of animals; and becoming interested in some lands, he removed his family there, the more easily to complete the survey. There the rebellion found him, and he was not permitted to return to the north. There his life was closed. On his exhibition of his fossil collections in North Carolina, at the meeting of the Scientific Association at Albany in 1856, Professor Agassiz stated that the discoveries were of a higher character in geology than any published for years.

The offices Dr. Emmons held show the public estimate of his qualifications and acquisitions. His labors show that this estimate was not too high or misplaced.

In his Report on the Second (his) District of New York, which before his examination was unknown as to its geology, Dr. Emmons gave a lucid and full view of the rocks and their relations, and chapter VII and the two following contain his "Taconic System," or the rocks between the fossiliferous of Eastern New York and the primary rocks of the western part of New England. In the Report on the Agriculture of the State, published in 1843, Dr. Emmons gave an expanded and interesting view of the Taconic System. Though opposed by some of his associated geologists and by some others of high distinction, the author has found support in some distinguished geologists of Europe. Dr. Emmons died as he had lived, an honest man, a warm hearted friend, a loyal citizen, and an humble and consistent christian.

C. D.