Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/587
POPULAR MISCELLANY.
Ward, Lester P., Washington. The Cretaceous Rim of the Black Hills. Pp. 16.—Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism. Pp. 71.—Principes et Méthodes d'Étude de Corrélation géologique au Moyen des Plantes fossiles (Methods of Study of Geological Correlation by Means of Fossil Plants). Pp. 10.
"Wheelbarrow." Articles and Discussions on the Labor Question. Pp. 303. $1.
Wilkins, W. H.. and Vivian, Herbert. The Green Bay Tree. New York: J. Selwin Tait & Sons. Pp. 389. 50 cents.
Wright, Mabel Osgood. The Friendship of Nature. Pp. 238. 75 cents.
Prof. William Dwight Whitney.—Prof. William Dwight Whitney, of Yale College, the foremost and greatest American philologist, died June 7th, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He was born at Northampton, Mass., in 1827; was graduated from Williams College in 1845; after spending three years in the Northampton Bank, he went to Lake Superior in 1849 as an assistant in botany and ornithology in the United States Geological Survey. Having begun the study of Sanskrit, he continued it at Yale College, under Prof. Salisbury, for one year after his return from this work. He then studied in Germany, under Prof. Weber, of Berlin, and Prof. Roth, of Tübingen. Before he was thirty years of age he had edited, with Prof. Roth, the Atharda Veda, and had become Professor of Sanskrit in Yale College. He prepared a series of German text-books which have sustained an excellent reputation, and continued the publication of Sanskrit books in rapid succession, crowning the series with a Sanskrit grammar in English and German, and a book on the Roots, Verb Forms, and Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Language, which appeared in 1879. These works, says the Nation, "are based, not on the dicta of predecessors, but upon actual observation of the facts of the language, which are subjected to masterly classification and vigorously scientific induction." He wrote frequent and valuable essays on Hindu astronomy, phonetics, comparative grammar, and mythology; Oriental religions and literature, and the origin and nature of languages; and delivered lectures at the Smithsonian and Lowell Institutions, out of which grew the volume on the Life and Growth of Language of the International Scientific Series and his book on Language and the Study of Language, which have been widely translated. Other essays were embodied in the book. Oriental and Linguistic Studies. He was an important contributor to the Sanskrit-German Lexicon published by the Imperial Academy of Russia, 1852-'75; was a member and officer of the American Oriental Society for fifty-one years, and its president after 1884; was first president of the American Philological Association and a frequent contributor to its Transactions and Proceedings; was editor-in-chief of the Century Dictionary, and was a member of numerous learned societies abroad. A biographical sketch of Prof. Whitney was given, with portrait, in The Popular Science Monthly for May, 1879 (Vol. XV).
Women and Education in the South. A valuable circular published by the United States Bureau of Education is that on Southern Women in the Recent Educational Movement in the South, which has been prepared by the Rev. A. D. Mayo, and embodies a review of what he has seen and learned during twelve years that he has been engaged in the service of education in the South, in which he has come in contact with every variety of school, both races, and all classes. The essay presents three main divisions, relating respectively to Southern schools for the education of girls; the work of Northern and Southern women in the superior schools for colored youth; and the common school; in all of which departments the women of the South are becoming every year more broadly and vitally interested. To the principal paper are added in an appendix several essays, originally presented as lectures or magazine articles, bearing on the subject of education in the South.
Cause of the Migration of Birds.—Concerning the reason of birds migrating. Canon Tristram observed in the British Association that observation has brought to light many facts which seem to increase the difficulties of a satisfactory answer to the question. The autumnal retreat from the breeding quarters might be explained by a want of sufficient sustenance as winter approaches in the higher latitudes, but this will not account for the return migration in spring, since there is no perceptible diminution of
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