Island. The
former has no lake, as the latter has; and Columbus insists on a lake.
He also went in one day with oars around the north end--a feat
impossible in one case and easy in the other. Watling, for this and
other reasons dwelt on by English surveyors, is on the new maps
rebaptized San Salvador, in rectification of euphony not less than of
historic truth. If now equally successful inquiry could be brought to
bear on the identity of the Discoverer's bones, claimed alike by Hayti
and Cuba, it would be an additional comfort to the lovers of fact.

Steam-service is steadily growing more frequent, regular and
expeditious, and the next generation of Americans will doubtless pack
their portmanteaus as lightly for the Canaries, the Loffodens and the
Galapagos as that now in being does for Appledore or Mount Desert. For
individual health, relaxation or enjoyment, not more than for the
general invigoration and well-being of the race, we need to be on easier
terms with the sea. The old maritime spirit, so striking to the eyes of
Burke, seems to have died out from among us. If we are to have a
brilliant and assured future, we must not look for it wholly to the
land. It may not rise sheer, Britain- and Aphrodite-like, from the
breast of ocean, but it must yet rest partly upon that most solid of
supports, the ever-shifting wave.

The Principles of Light and Color. By Edwin D. Babbitt. New York:
Babbitt & Co.

Were we to open this book about the middle we should be disposed to set
it down, on the strength of its latter half, as a contribution to the
literature of the Pleasantonian (or blue-glass) school of natural
philosophy. This impression would be humored by the bluish tint of the
paper upon which it is printed. But an inspection of the entire work
would show that it is something more comprehensive and ambitious, not to
say more interesting and suggestive. It is the product of a bold and
original, if not exactly close and systematic, thinker--one who, with a
longer and severer experimental training in the fields he has chosen for
exploration, would command the respectful attention of leading
scientific men. He begins with the reflection that, "in spite of the
wonderful achievements of experimental scientists, no definite
conceptions of atomic machinery, or the fundamental processes of
thermal, electric, chemical, physiological or psychological action, have
been attained." He proposes to remedy this failure, and to carry