650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scientific, the progress of such a controversy is often very entertain- 

 ing. It is true that the actual battles take place in places beyond our 

 ken, generally at meetings of scientific societies, where the orators 

 have it all their own way and confound their adversaries till the 

 opposition society meets. But though the philosophers retire for 

 fighting purposes, and do battle in the clouds with weapons, phrases, 

 and formulae, that we cannot understand, they always come down 

 again to earth to proclaim their victories or palliate their defeats. 

 Once they come down, and we catch them with pens in their hands, 

 the outsiders have their turn. 



It is not, however, in the great books of Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, 

 Helmholtz, Tait, or Thomson, that we may seek food for amusement. 

 In these works every thought is in full dress and every phrase deco- 

 rous. But there is another sort of literature in which we see the great 

 men, so to speak, with their coats off. The " Proceedings " of the 

 learned societies where the real fi^htino; goes on are full of entertain- 

 ment. Students of human nature need no further proof that, though 

 every man may not be a philosopher, every philosopher is certainly a 

 man. With what frank enjoyment they fight ! With what irony 

 what sarcasm they annihilate their foes ! It must, however, be con- 

 fessed that sarcasm is not, as a rule, the strong point of the learned. 

 The editor of a northern newspaper of our acquaintance was one day 

 speaking in terms of praise of his sub-editor : " The brilliancy of yon 

 young man," said he, "is surprising ; the facility with which he jokes 

 amazes me. I, myself, am in the habit of joking, but I joke with diffi- 

 culty." We have observed the same peculiarity among other learned 

 persons. They joke, but not with ease. 



Most of the books which we have prefixed to this paper contain 

 their authors' thoughts polished ad iinguem. It would not be fair to 

 judge of the opinions of the scientific persons we quote by any other 

 standard than that which they have themselves cai'efully prepared ; 

 but yet we cannot refrain from entertaining a preference for the 

 rough-and-ready, hard-hitting pamphlets, lectures, " proceedings," in- 

 augural addresses, and the like, from which, almost without exception, 

 these works have been compiled. For example, Mr. Croll's work on 

 " Climate and Time " is everything which a scientific work should be 

 that requires deep research and laborious thought, combined with the 

 boldest generalization ; but it is a digest of some five or six and thirty 

 papers contributed to scientific magazines and periodicals during 

 several years. Mr. Croll gives a list of his papers at the end of his 

 volume. But though it is most convenient to see the whole before us 

 at a glance, and to have them all under our hand or on the library-shelf, 

 yet we acknowledge that while thinking over Mr. Croll's volume, for 

 the purposes of this review, we found ourselves again and again going 

 back to the pages of the Reader and the Philosophical 3Iagazine, in 

 which we first made acquaintance with them. It may be prejudice 



