This third volume of Mr. Bancroft's great series, treating of the mythology and of the languages of the various tribes in Central America and in the western half of North America, fully sustains the interest called up by its predecessors in abundance of valuable facts, and, in our opinion, surpasses them in attractiveness of subject and style, so far at least as that part of it devoted to "myths" is concerned. The section of the work devoted to "languages" must have a high importance for philologists, giving, as it is asserted to do, all that is known of the languages of the territory embraced, synopsized grammars, vocabularies, peculiar characteristics, etc., grouping them into families, and so on; but it is obviously impossible for anyone but a well-trained and very widely read philologist to criticise it with understanding, or even to read it with much interest or profit.

With the mythology it is very different. Not only are real aboriginal myths in themselves interesting reading to most persons, but there are few men of any culture at all who will not find them also instructive and suggestive. Man, the meanest man, with a red or brown skin upon him, and in him wild weird theories of the past, the present, the hereafter, of the infinite, of the incomprehensible, is not without fascination to any of us. For we feel that we are akin to the savage; that we are sepulchres more or less deeply whited; that every note in the barbarian's soul has its lingering echo in our

own.

Selection, evolution, and culture have made our religion purer and more sublime than the religion of the Aztec or that of the Nootka - Columbian. We can afford some. times to smile at the absurdities or shudder at the cruelties of the creeds and rites of

these primitive worshipers; but when arrogance or bigotry rise in our minds, we should remember that civilization is not stationary, and that the day may come when our chil dren will look back at us as we at those who worship stocks and stones.

A more attractive series of myths than those laid before us by Mr. Bancroft, and in a more attractive garb, it would be hard to produce; and one's satisfaction is the more complete as one observes the learned and laborious precautions taken to point out what is spurious or doubtful. The Quichés, or original inhabitants of Guatemala, have left us a collection of their cosmic and religious myths, which, as translated in part from the original, from the French of Brasseur de Bourbourg, and from the Spanish of Dr. C. Scherzer, is not, for example, without an impressive sublimity:

"Once more are the gods in council. In the darkness of the night of a desolated universe do they commune together: Of what shall we make man? And the Creator and Former made four perfect men, and wholly of yellow and white maize was their flesh composed. These were the names of the four men that were made: The name of the first was Balam

Quitzé; of the second, Balam - Agal; of the third, Mahucutah; and of the fourth, Iqui - Balam. They had neither father nor mother, neither were they made by the ordinary agents in the work of creation; but their coming into existence was a miracle extra

ordinary, wrought by the special intervention of Him who is pre-eminently the Creator. Verily, at last were there found men worthy of their origin and their destiny; verily, at last did the gods look on beings who could see with their eyes, and handle with their hands, and understand with their hearts. Grand of countenance and broad of limb, the four sires of our race stood up under the white rays of the morning star-sole light as yet of the primeval world— stood up and looked. Their great, clear eyes swept rapidly over all; they saw the woods and the rocks, the lakes and the sea, the mountains and the valleys, and the heavens that were above all; and they com. prehended all and admired exceedingly. Then they

returned thanks to those who had made the world and all that therein was: We offer up our thanks twice, yea, verily, thrice! We have received life; we speak, we walk, we taste; we hear and under. stand; we know both that which is near and that

which is far off; we see all things, great and small, in all the heaven and earth. Thanks, then, Maker and Former, Father and Mother of our life! We

have been created, we are."

It

But space is limited and time is short. is impossible to give quotations at length, and impossible, save by the aid of quotations, to give any fair idea of a book which, according to the author's plan, eschews theories and generalities and confines itself to the valuable work of recording facts. A résumé of the principal "gods of America" will be found in the body of this number of the OVERLAND, and to this we refer our readers, or, best of all, to Mr. Bancroft's work itself. The whole subject is in fragments. Mr. Bancroft has done noble service in collecting them, and it is only by examin. ing the fragments together that any tolerably clear idea of the great though mangled whole can be obtained. We close with another quotation, which not only illustrates the difficulties of the labor whose results lie before us, but which mutatis mutandis applies to the scientific study of mythology throughout almost all its ramifications among savage and barbarous peoples indebted to unsympathetic, bigoted, or ignorant chroniclers for their historic existence:

"The Mexican religion, as transmitted to us, is a confused and clashing chaos of fragments. If ever the great nation of Anáhuac had its Hesiod or its Homer, no ray of his light has reached the stumbling feet of research in that direction; no echo of his harmony has been ever heard by any ear less dull than that of a Zumarraga. It is given to few men to rise above their age, and it is folly to expect grapes of thorns or figs of thistles; yet it is hard to suppress wholly some feelings of regret in poring upon those ponderous tomes of sixteenth and seventeenth century history that touch upon Mexican religion. One pities far less the inevitable superstition and childish ignorance of the barbarian than the senility of his Christian historian and critic. There was some element of hope and evidence of attainment in what the half-civilized barbarian knew; but from what heights of Athenian, Roman, and Alexandrian philosophy and eloquence had civilization fallen into the dull and arrogant nescience of the chronicles of the clergy of Spain."

NOTES ON PARIS. By H. Taine. Translated with Notes by John Austin Stevens. New York: Henry Holt & Co. These Notes on Paris are put in the form of a "Life and Opinions of M. Frédéric

Thomas Graindorge," as collected and published by H. Taine. The mythical M. Graindorge serves as a spokesman for the very real, brilliant, and famous M. Taine. The opinions of the author of the Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, as so expressed, about Parisian society, are somewhat cynical. We must, however, remember that he is speaking of the Paris that was before Sedan. "Paris is France," Victor Hugo says, and, if so, France was ripe indeed for Sedan, and it will be long before she ripens for an Austerlitz. M. Taine's impressions of Paris are not pleasant impressions, and bear greater weight in that he himself does not strike one as being particularly prudish or supersen. sitive. The characteristic man of Paris no longer appears as half tiger, half ape: the first half of him is absent or well hidden. The characteristic woman of Paris is either a doll or something that almost extenuates the ferocity of Dumas' "tue-la!" "Men of the world who live for pleasure and reach it one time in ten; shop-keepers who run after it and never reach it at all; courtesans and a flash - mob who sell it or steal it. Such is Paris. One only end: pleasure and display." What a pity the cup of Circe should always hang so near the pig-sty.

"The best of men in Paris lie ten times a day; the best of women twenty times a day; the fashionable man a hundred times a day. No estimate has ever been made as to how many times a day a fashionable woman lies." Mr. Thiéblin, the Pall Mall Gazette war correspondent—a most liberal and unprejudiced man-writes: "I made the sad experience of never having been able to arrive at anything like the truth all the time I was with the French army." The great nation of conversationists has not reached its giddy eminence in "the art of talking, which is a French art," without certain small sacrifices,

as we see.

Well, but this is only fashionable society, perhaps, or the demi-monde that sets the fashion to the monde. Paris is the focus of literature and art. The artists and the men of letters are the salt of the city. But how if the salt has lost its savor? "The public is blasé," writes our Graindorge; "it listens only to those who shout the loudest. Every artist is like a charlatan whom the eagerness

are not mistaken, a perfect piece of merciless dissection of human character. It sets one's teeth on edge, and makes one agree with Swift in his opinion of his species, but it does make good reading. Perhaps, indeed, the whole book is none the worse in that it is so "wicked."

Perhaps education will make the next generation nobler. Ask Taine how the girls he sees are made into women-into mothers. "The education of the old school has disappeared, that of the new has not yet begun. They float between the remains of the past and the first sketches of the future; half provoking and half timid, neither virgins nor wives; half male, half female, with the recollections of school-girls, the weak fancies of actresses." The old type of modest French young lady, half nun, half actress, is gone. The young French woman of this decade is "fast;" she "understands the offensive and defensive; holds her ground against real men; fences with her tongue, and blow for blow, steel crossed with steel, she ventures upon dangerous skirmishes, from which she comes out her vanity in triumph and her delicacy in rags." The good Americans who go to Paris when they die, will then, it seems, meet a type of young lady there not wholly strange to them at home.

And the firesides of Paris, furnished with human furniture of such material, what are they? "In bourgeois households, bickering; in society, adultery. In the bourgeois households which are fashionable, one or the other, and sometimes both."

All this is more or less exaggerated, as it is avowed to be by the very plan of the book, and as all cynicism and sarcasm must be to be effective. It is written by a Frenchman, who is a graduate of Oxford, and well acquainted with the literature, thought, and society of France, England, and Germany. If he does not know what the Paris of the second empire was, no one does. His book is delicious reading to any one with a spice of malice in him, and who is without that spice? The last chapter especially is, if we

AND GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS West of the ONE-HUNDREDTH MEDRIDIAN IN 1872. By Lieut. George M. Wheeler. Washington: Government Printing Office.

This work, a quarto pamphlet of fifty-six pages, describes the progress made with the explorations and surveys mentioned on the title-page during the year 1872. It is accompanied by an atlas, exhibiting the topogra phy of the different sections of country passed over, and contains a skeleton map whereon the whole is presented at one view; and also a number of plates illustrative of some of the most striking natural objects and scenes. Among the latter are several views taken along the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, one of the most fearful gorges to be found on the face of the earth. As these were executed by the photo-lithographic process, they must necessarily be true to nature, and may be depended upon as conveying to the mind a vivid and faithful impression of the original.

This report consists of two general divisions, the first being devoted to an analysis of the results reached in the different departments of the expedition, and the other to an exposition of matters relating to mining, agriculture, routes of communication, Indians, etc. Under the first head the astronomical, topographical, meteorological, and geological labors of the expedition are treated; the collections made in natural history, scenes photographed, and other matters of minor import being here also considered. The observations for the determination of latitude and longitude having been planned with reference to great minuteness of detail and exactness, will necessarily require much additional time for their completion, and will therefore constitute matter for future reports. Five skilled operators were employed in the topographic department, their labors having been extended over more than fifty thousand square

miles during the year, the area covered lying in western and south-western Utah, eastern Nevada, and north-western Arizona. Their observations will afford data for the construction of full and accurate maps of this entire region. A large mass of material has been accumulated in the meteorological department, which will be published hereafter. The facts here collected will prove both interesting and of great utility in farming and other practical affairs. In the departments of geology and natural history a large amount of information, with many specimens peculiar to each, has been gathered, all of which must prove, not only curious, but of great economic value.

During the season forty-eight mining districts were visited and examined, twenty-five of these being in Utah, twelve in Nevada, and eleven in Arizona. The information in relation to these districts is in several cases quite full, and, so far as it goes, always accurate. The remarks made on the agricultural and grazing resources of this region, the necessity and facilities that exist for irrigation, routes of communication, etc., are all of a sound and practical kind, and can not fail to be of much service to parties intending to settle in, or travel through that country. Judg. ing by the plates contained in this pamphlet, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado presents many views far more gloomy and awe-inspiring, if not so grand, than any thing to be seen in the valley of the Yosemite.

FUNGI; THEIR NATURE AND USES. BY M. C. Cooke, M.A., L.L.D. Edited by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S. [International Scientific Series, vol. xv.] New York: D. Appleton & Co.

A work on “hysterophytal or epiphytal mycetals deriving nourishment by means of a mycelium from the matrix," is not by any means to be regarded as a light literary side dish. In fact, by the majority of that class which loves to taste here and there of the sweets of popular science, this platter of "fungi" will doubtless be looked upon as a decidedly "indigestible solid." In other words, this volume will not be read by the general reader with the same avidity as its predecessors. Nevertheless, it will be welcomed by many as an important contribution

to a curious and interesting branch of scientific knowledge.

Although all kinds of fungi are now duly and universally admitted as plants into the vegetable kingdom, there was at one time a doubt as to whether the order Myxogastres was of an animal or vegetable nature. It is now known that there is no relationship whatever between this or any other order and the lower forms of animal life. Another question concerning fungi is the probability of minute fungi being developed without the intervention of germs from certain solutions. Mr. Cooke's opinion on this subject is, that it must ever "be matter of doubt that all germs were not excluded or destroyed, rather than one of belief that forms known to be developed day by day from germs should under other conditions originate spontaneously. Fungi are veritably and unmistakably plants, of a low organization, it is true, but still plants, developed from germs somewhat analogous, but not wholly homologous, to the seeds of higher orders." The number of species of fungi is as great as their habits and places of growth are various. A large number thrive parasitically on many kinds of plants, distorting, and, in many cases, ultimately destroying, their host; burrowing within the tissues, and causing rust and smut in corn and grasses, or are even more injurious in such forms as the potato disease and its allies. A still larger number of fungi are developed from decayed or decaying vegetable matter. Some species are always found upon animal matter-leather, horn, bone, etc.-while some affect such unpromising substances as minerals, being found not only on hard gravel-stones and fragments of rock, but also on metals, such as iron and lead. Of the fungi found on animal substances, none are more extraordinary than those species which attack insects, such as the white mold which in autumn proves so destructive to the common house-fly, or the mold named Isaria in which moths, spiders, and butter. flies become enveloped. In the case of the Guêpes végétantes, the wasp is said to fly about with the fungus partially developed. Many of the molds are miniature representatives of higher plants, having roots, stems, and branches, and sporidia-bearing capsules which correspond to seeds. A tuft of mold

is in miniature a forest of trees, and, says Mr. Cooke, although such a definition may be deemed more poetic than accurate, more figurative than literal, yet few could believe in the marvelous beauty of a tuft of mold if they never saw it as exhibited under the microscope.' To the structure, classification, and uses of fungi, three separate chapters are devoted; the last, describing edible fungi, being especially interesting. In the chapter on "Notable Phenomena," the curious sub

ject of fungous luminosity is treated of. Among other instances, one is quoted from the Rev. M. J. Berkeley's Gardener's Chronicle, which is very remarkable, and will interest those of our readers who, as school-boys, were in the habit of secreting fragments of rotten wood penetrated by mycelium, in order to exhibit their luminous properties in the dark, and thus astonish their more ignorant or incredulous fellows. The book is, on the whole, very instructive.

From A. ROMAN & Co.:

Longevity: The Means of Prolonging Life after Middle Age. By John Gardner, M. D. Boston: W. F. Gill & Co.

The Maintenance of Health. By J. M. Fothergill,

M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. We and Our Neighbors. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: J. B. Ford & Co.

Navigation in Theory and Practice. By Henry Evers, LL.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Brief Biographies. Vol. I. English Statesmen. Prepared by T. W. Higginson. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Sexes throughout Nature. By Antoinette B. Blackwell. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. How to make a Living. By Geo. C. Eggleston. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Best Reading. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Young Outlaw. By Horatio Alger, Jr. Boston: A. K. Loring.

A Simple Flower Garden. By Charles Barnard. Boston: A. K. Loring.

Love Afloat. By T. H. Sheppard. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Paul Massie. By Justin McCarthy. New York: Sheldon & Co.

Sex in Industry. By Azel Ames. Boston: Jas. R. Osgood & Co.

Musical Composers and their Works. By Sarah Tytler. Boston: Roberts Bros.

Harry Blount. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts Bros.

The House on the Heights. By Harriet B. McKee-
ver. Philadelphia: H. N. McKinney & Co.
The Struggle for Existence. After the German of
Robert Byr. Philadelphia: H. N. McKinney &
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Manual of Diet. By Thomas King Chambers. Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea.

From PAYOT, UPHAM & Co.:

Africa: The History of Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to Livingstone. By Charles H. Jones. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Mistress Judith. By C. C. Fraser-Tytler. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Protection and Free Trade. By Isaac Butts. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Ralph Wilton's Weird. By Mrs. Alexander. New York: Henry Holt & Co.