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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Ragnarok : The Age of Fire and Gravel. 

 By Ignatius Donnelly, author of ' At- 

 lantis : the Antediluvian World." Illus- 

 trated. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 452. 

 Price, $2. 



This must rank, we suppose, as a book 

 of science, though it is of a quite peculiar 

 kind. It is something like what one of 

 Jules Yerne's books would be if that author 

 should stoutly protest that the story was all 

 true. The author put forth a work not long 

 since, entitled " Atlantis : the Antediluvian 

 World," in which he maintained that there 

 is a good deal more truth than poetry about 

 the old story of the fabled island. The 

 book was readable and popular ; and, en- 

 couraged by its success, he has now struck 

 out more boldly, and given us in " Ragna- 

 rok" perhaps the most stunning and stu- 

 pendous romance of science that has ever 

 been perpetrated. 



Opinions will be divided as to whether 

 the author is practicing upon public credu- 

 lity by an enormous joke, or whether he 

 does not really himself half believe half 

 that he says. He is probably a lawyer, and 

 at all events a politician ; and it would, 

 therefore, not be fair to him to raise any 

 question of the sincerity of his views. Nor 

 is it at all important how this point is re- 

 garded by the reader, for this is just the 

 peculiar kind of science that escapes all 

 perplexing and stupid inquiry about its 

 truth. 



The work is geological, astronomic, and 

 religious, because it falls back upon these 

 three subjects for the materials of the au- 

 thor's theory. This theory has two aspects, 

 a negative and critical, and a positive and 

 constructive aspect. It first maintains that 

 the loose materials of the earth's surface 

 gravel, pebbles, stones, sand, clay, bowlders, 

 and the miscellaneous mineral stuff which 

 makes up the drift or diluvial deposits upon 

 the earth's surface are not derived from 

 the rocks that make up the earth's crust, as 

 taught by geology. The author has read 

 over all the geological treatises and spec- 

 ulations on the origin of these superficial 

 formations, and devotes his first eight chap- 

 ters to a very ingenious presentation of the 

 insufficiency of all existing theories upon 



the subject. Evidently knowing little about 

 it himself, in the real sense of knowing 

 (that is, as a first-hand observer of facts), 

 and addressing an audience in a quite sim- 

 ilar state of mind, he has no difficulty in 

 making out a wonderfully plausible case. 

 If the experts in " evidence" can often con- 

 vict innocent men and get scoundrels ac- 

 quitted in the very teeth of opposing repre- 

 sentations, it is easy to get up a telling case 

 where there are many gaps and discrepan- 

 cies in our knowledge of a new, extensive, 

 and very complex subject. 



Having thus impeached the geologists, 

 our author has a clear field. If the loose 

 mineral materials under our feet are not 

 from the rocks, then pray where do they 

 come from ? The human intellect can not 

 stand still, as if struck with paralysis, and 

 wait forever for the geologists to settle 

 their disputes ; we must have an answer, 

 and be at peace. Mr. Donnelly then pro- 

 ceeds to supply the answer. He here strikes 

 off into astronomy, and maintains that this 

 mineral debris is of meteoric origin. Stones 

 are known to fall from the heavens, and 

 spectrum analysis proves that the celestial 

 bodies are composed of the same mineral 

 constituents that are found upon the earth. 

 There being, as old Kepler says, more com- 

 ets in the heavens than fishes in the sea, 

 and their movements being so apparently 

 capricious and irregular that they dash about 

 through the solar system with the greatest 

 liability of striking its steady-going mem- 

 bers, it is maintained that the earthly drift 

 has been dropped upon this globe by one of 

 these incontinent wanderers, as, perhaps, the 

 earth went through its tail. 



The author propounds this idea as an 

 hypothesis, insufficient it may be at first 

 blush, but admissible when all others have 

 broken down. But he does not by any 

 means leave the question in this specula- 

 tive condition ; he proceeds to summon the 

 proofs that his hypothesis must take rank 

 among great scientific truths. For this pur- 

 pose he enters the vast field of legendary 

 lore, and shows by the myths, traditions, 

 fables, allegories, and obscure imaginative 

 inventions of all peoples and nations, that 

 something prodigious once happened to this 

 globe, which he claims was nothing else 

 than the deposit of the .drift formation 



