Two Spanish-American works of very different character have come to us from Valparaiso, Chili. One is entitled _Literatura Arcaica--Estudios Criticos_, or critical studies of old Spanish literature, by _Eduardo de la Barra_, of the Royal Spanish Academy, which were communicated to the Latin-American Scientific Congress at Buenos Ayres. The author was invited to present to the congress the fruits of his extensive studies on the Poem of the Cid, but afterward modified his plan and gave these, the results of his more general investigations of the romances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which Spanish critics regard as the most ancient they have, and other romances attributed to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with an article on the Cid. This work is published by K. Newman, Valparaiso. The other book is a volume of _Rrimas_, or rhymes, by _Gustabo Adolfo Béker_, published by Carlos Cabezon, at Valparaiso. The ordinary student might think that the Spanish language is one of those least in need of spelling reform, but not so the author and publisher of these poems, which are presented in the most radically "reformed" spelling, and with them comes a pamphlet setting forth the character and principles of "Ortografia Rrazional." The report of a study of seventy-three Irish and Irish-American criminals made at the Kings County Penitentiary, Brooklyn, N. Y., by Dr. _H. L. Winter_, and published as _Notes on Criminal Anthropology and Bio-Sociology_, contains numerous observations bearing upon the effect of hereditary influences in criminality, but hardly sufficient to justify the drawing of any general conclusions. The late Mr. Lewis M. Rutherfurd, in developing the art of astronomical photography, naturally gave much attention to the star 61 Cygni--which was the first to yield its parallax, and through which the possibility of measuring stellar distances was shown--and its neighbors. A number of the plates of this series were partially studied by Miss Ida C. Martin more than twenty years ago, and the study has now been carried out by _Herman S. Davis_, as part of the work of Columbia University Observatory. The results of Mr. Davis's labors are published by the observatory in three papers: _Catalogue of Sixty-five Stars near 61 Cygni_; _The Parallaxes of 61^1 and 61^2 Cygni_; and _Catalogue of Thirty-four Stars near "Bradley 3077"_; under a single cover.