in the ample history of gas lighting. Geology, voltaic electricity, magnetism, and other departments of pure or applied science, are treated with reasonable fulness. As a literary work the Cyclopedia is written in a pure and chaste style, and exhibits the candor and fairness which should ever adorn a record of universal knowledge.

B. S.

An Introduction to Practical Pharmacy: designed as a text-book for the Student, &c.; by EDWARD PARRISH. Philadelphia. 2d edition. 246 illustrations. 8vo, pp. 720. Blanchard & Lea, 1859.-A well arranged and carefully prepared treatise, adapted to the state of this art in the United States.

Elements of Inorganic Chemistry, including the applications of the Science in the Arts; by THOS. GRAHAM, F.R.S., L. and E. Edited by HENRY WATTS, B.A., and ROBT. BRIDGES, M.D. 2d American edition in one volume. 233 woodcuts, 8vo, pp. 852. Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea. 1858.-The American publishers issued the 430 first pages of this volume in 1852 under the editorship of Dr. Bridges. The remainder is reproduced without alteration from the English edition.

Nautical Monographs, No. I. (Washington Observatory) Oct. 1859. The winds at sea, their mean direction, and annual average duration from each of the four quarters. With four plates of diagrams of winds and calms. 4to, pp. 8. By Lt. M. F. MAURY.

Caloric: its Mechanical, Chemical and Vital Agencies in the Phenomena of Nature; by SAMUEL J. METCALF, M.D. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 630 and 481. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

Announced.

A Dictionary of English Surnames; by JOHN HENRY ALEXANDER, Esq., of Baltimore, Maryland.-The work will be comprehended in about one thousand pages, and it will be sent to press directly after the necessary commercial and technical arrangements can be made.

4to.

Little, Brown & Company, of Boston, propose to publish by subscription a series of photo-lithographic plates of the Fossil Footprints found on the Connecticut River Sandstone, prepared by the late Dr. JAMES DEANE, of Greenfield, in one volume, Price $5.00.-The work will be issued under the superintendence of T. T. BOUVE, Esq., A. A. GOULD, M.D., and HENRY I. BOWDITCH, M.D., and for the benefit of the family of Dr. Deane, and will be published in the best style, similar to Prof. Agassiz's "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States." Two hundred subscribers are required.

OBITUARY.

Mr. GUSTAVUS WURDEMANN died on the 29th of Sept. 1859 at Swedesboro, N. J., aged 41 years. Mr. Wurdemann was employed in the U. S. Coast Survey since 1837, in the last twelve years of his life principally as a tidal and meteorological observer in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The observations made by him are of great value for their completeness and faithfulness. The short intervals of time left to him by the confining nature of his duties he employed with much success in collecting objects of natural history, and as he was mostly stationed on parts of our coast seldom visited by naturalists, he succeeded in obtaining several species new to science and still more which were new to the fauna of the United States. His collections are in the museums of the Smithsonian Institution and of Prof. Agassiz in Cambridge. Most of his zoological acquisitions have been already published to the world. The largest of our North American herons, Ardea Wurdemanni, was discovered by him.

JAMES P. ESPY, one of the most successful meteorologists of our time, died in Cincinnati, on the 24th of January, after a short illness, in the 75th year of his age. We expect to present a notice of his life in our May number.

JEAN-FRED.-LUDW. HAUSMANN, the eminent mineralogist, died at Göttingen, Dec. 26, 1859, aged 77 years 10 months.

& Forcal row of sure, with a portion of the shell remored so as to show the in star on the internal cast

Fix &ternal as another specimen of same species, showing mus