26 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



as the present necessary. It is written in Mr. 

 Page's usual calm philosophical style, and to the 

 technical student is invaluable, not only for the 

 large amount of information given, but also for the 

 bibliographical references at the end of each 

 chapter. By this means an investigator has his 

 work much simplified, and is put upon the track of 

 the information he seeks at once. Mining, agricul- 

 ture, quarrying, chemistry, engineering of all 

 kinds, materia medica, &c, all need some degree of 

 the geological information which Professor Page 

 here unfolds from his large stock. The book is a 

 welcome addition to our geological literature, and is 

 well worthy its author's reputation. 



"The Naturalist in Nicaragua," by Mr. Thomas 

 Belt (London: John Murray), has been published 

 some months. Its success will therefore have 

 already been heard of by many of our readers. Por 

 ourselves we confess to not having experienced such 

 pleasure in reading any books of travel since 

 Darwin's "Journal of a Naturalist," and Wallace's 

 " Malayan Archipelago." Mr. Belt is an able 

 naturalist and a keen observer, and this book is full 

 of original observations of the most valuable kind, 

 especially in relation to the subjects of Mimicry, the 

 relations of birds and insects to flowers, &c. Mr- 

 Belt is an evolutionist, and certainly one can 

 hardly get away from such peculiar affinities and 

 relationships as he narrates, without having recourse 

 to the theory of natural selection. As far as the 

 latter hypothesis goes, Mr. Belt's book is undoubt- 

 edly a valuable contribution. And the general 

 reader cannot but be delighted with the vividly 

 drawn scenes of other lands, and of their inhabit- 

 ants, such as the author portrays on every page. 

 We do not think Mr. Belt is so fortunate in his 

 geological explanations as he is in his Natural His- 

 tory, although it is evident he attaches more im- 

 portance to them himself. He believes the glacial 

 agencies extended themselves to the equator, and 

 that the low hills of the latter were once packed 

 with ice. Nay, he even goes farther, and builds up 

 a theory of the sea having stood in Equatorial 

 regions at a thousand feet lower level during the 

 Glacial epoch, owing to the water having been 

 abstracted and turned into ice at each pole ! We 

 wish such theorists would remember that the forma- 

 tion of ice is quite as much a matter of heat as it is 

 of cold— that we require open seas and hot suns in 

 order to lift the vapours which, carried away, shall 

 elsewhere be converted into snows ! Therefore, as 

 Professor Prankland showed some time ago, large 

 quantities of ice in the shape of glaciers, in one part 

 of the globe, can only be formed throngh the agency 

 of intense heat in another. 



"The Treasury of Botany" (London: Long- 

 mans & Co.), edited originally by Dr. Lindley and 

 Thomas Moore, P.L.S., has obtained the confidence 

 of botanists for many years, as a handy book of re- 



ference, containing a marvellous storehouse of 

 trustworthy facts. The present new edition, there- 

 fore, which is in many places completely re- written, 

 and everywhere revised, and which contains the 

 newest views on structural, embryological, and tera- 

 tological botany, cannot fail to attain a still higher 

 status. Among the special contributors are the 

 Rev. M. J. Berkeley, Dr. Masters, Prof. Balfour, 

 Prof. Dyer, Prof. Dickie, Dr. Syme, Messrs. 

 Carruthers, Britten, J. R. Jackson, Hemsley, &c. 

 These names will be a guarantee for the trust- 

 worthiness of the matter, and the articles contribu- 

 ted by them have the initials of the authors affixed. 

 The " Treasury of Botany " ought to be found on 

 the shelves of every botanical library. 



"Manuals of Botany" are not rare. Indeed, 

 the difficulty is to steer clear of them, and were it 

 not for the process of natural selection which is 

 quietly eliminating the weakest, and putting them 

 out of existence, the path of the botanical student 

 would be sorely beset. It is with genuine pleasure, 

 therefore, that we are able to notice a "Manual of 

 Botany" by Robert Brown, Ph. D. (London : W. 

 Blackwood & Sons). To prevent mistakes, it 

 may be necessary to state that the work is not 

 by the philosophical botanist of the same 

 name, who has been long dead. Mr. Brown did 

 good work as commandant of the Vancouver Ex- 

 ploring Expedition, to which — and also to the '67 

 Greenland Expedition — he acted as botanist. The 

 present volume is wholly anatomical and physio- 

 logical, and is illustrated by nearly 400 woodcuts. 

 To the student, the chief value of the present 

 manual consists in its including all the new aspects 

 which botany has assumed since the revival of 

 philosophical speculation. The author has allowed 

 no lack of industry to interfere with his work — 

 indeed, of the two, it betrays evidence of too much 

 labour, rather than of too little ; and here and there 

 we notice signs of contradiction, due to immature 

 digestion of the numerous memoirs and papers 

 which Dr. Brown thought it necessary to read 

 before he wrote. These, however, are almost 

 necessary evils in a work like the present. On the 

 whole we can conscientiously recommend the 

 manual as a most useful, and, as regards the new 

 opinions and views, a necessary one. It is well 

 written, the woodcuts are excellent, and the type 

 and paper both good. 



Mr. F. W. Burbidge is well known as a horticul- 

 tural botanist. His " Cool Orchids, and How to 

 Grow them" (London: Hardwicke), is a capital 

 handbook to the cultivation of this singular group of 

 plants, a group daily becoming greater favourites. 

 By " Cool " orchids the author means those which 

 do not require any great degree of heat. There can 

 be little doubt that these plants are largely coming 

 into cultivation; and Mr. Burbidge shows that 

 many species of them may be grown to perfection 



