382 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



sorting the clays from the sands, and arranging the eskers and 

 drumlins in places where it is impossible to understand how any water 

 could flow at all, and to have flowed, not in the form of streams but 

 sheets of water. The position would be laughed out of court at once 

 if applied to subaerial streams and rivers, but when they are buried 

 under ice anything seems possible. 



Lastly, the old Norwegian ice-sheet is trotted out, and nothing 

 said of the arguments and facts collected by Pettersen and Kjerulf in 

 Norway, and by Mattieu Williams and Bonney and others in 

 England, showing that the whole thing is a dream. 



I have merely quoted a few samples of the kind of geology which 

 may be found in this book. They are only samples. Every chapter, 

 and almost every paragraph, contains similar prae-Baconian logic, 

 and if I had room I might go on for ever. 



One word in conclusion, which is personal and necessary. It 

 would, in fact, be impossible for me to sign this article without 

 mentioning it. In referring to the works ignored by Mr. Geikie, I 

 have preferred to refer to those of better men than myself ; but I am 

 bound to say that I cannot quite ignore myself. I have written 

 two fat volumes and a great m.any papers on the subject chiefly in the 

 Geological Magazine, and others, in Nature, both of them publications of 

 high reputation. In them I have examined, with courtesy and with 

 such pains as I was capable of using, nearly every position main- 

 tained by Mr. Geikie, and have had the advantage of the support of 

 most responsible critics who have at great length reviewed my books in 

 thebestreviews, and of many distinguished private critics both physicists 

 and geologists. I had a right, therefore, to expect that some attempt 

 would have been made to meet my objections. It is no use in these 

 days supposing that the democratic wheels of Science are going to 

 spare the self-sufficient, and the self-engrossed, and the self-opinionated. 

 Every man whose work is to live must face his critics with frankness 

 and with pains, if the criticism is courteous and rational ; and those 

 who will not do so, but go on repeating old wives' tales that have 

 been exploded long ago, will find that the tide has mercilessly swept 

 away the sand-heaps they have built. With these unsubstantial 

 buildings may also go, if we have no care, reputations that are based 

 on something better than the truth of certain theories, namely, long 

 and devoted labours like Mr. Geikie's in the field. 



Henry H. Howorth. 



A Rare Book on American Zoology. 



A Reprint of the North American Zoology. By George Ord. Being an 

 exact reproduction of the part originally compiled by Mr. Ord for Johnson and 

 Warner, and first published by them in their Second American Edition of 

 Guthrie's " Geography," in 1815. Taken from Mr. Ord's private, annotated 

 copy. To which is added an appendix on the more important scientific and 

 historic questions involved. By Samuel H. Rhoads. Published by the Editor, 

 Haddonfield, New Jersey, 1890. Pp x., title page, pp. 290-361, and appendix 

 pp. 1-52, and " index to whole volume," pp. 53-90. With a portrait of Ord. 

 Price I3. 



It is perhaps hardly an exaggeration to say that no person on this 

 side of the Atlantic has ever seen Ord's " Zoology." The book is as 

 well-known by name among mammalogists as Linnaeus's " Systema 

 Naturae," on account of the endless controversies relative to the 

 nomenclature of the grizzly bear. In all discussions on the relation- 



