SKETCH OF PROFESSOR J. P. LESLEY. 695 



Philosophical Society " under various dates. During the last ten years 

 his official duties as director of the State survey, involving the pub- 

 lication of about seventy volumes of reports, have prevented in a 

 great measure his personal work as a geologist, and he has published 

 nothing over his own name except prefaces and notes to these reports. 

 But a large number of his geological papers, as above referred to, to- 

 gether with various essays on philological and antiquarian subjects, will 

 be found in the " Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society." 



Professor Lesley was for several years Secretary to the American 

 Iron Association, and he has also for many years been Secretary and 

 Librarian of the American Philosophical Society. Although a hard 

 worker in science, he is a man of varied intellectual accomplishments, 

 of a philosophical bent of mind, and interested in many of those higher 

 questions which are agitating the mind of the age. In 1865 he gave 

 a series of lectures before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which was 

 afterward published (1868) under the title of " Man's Origin and Des- 

 tiny as seen from the Platform of the Sciences." After being out of 

 print for several years, a new edition of this work was called for, 

 and it was revised and reissued, with six additional chapters, in 1881. 



The book abounds in evidence of the author's independence and 

 originality, and of his varied and extensive erudition. It is but just 

 to say, however, that it was not intended as an elaborate or system- 

 atic treatise, and it is thus characterized by the author himself : " The 

 author never contemplated anything beyond a general sketch of the 

 present bearings of science upon the vexed question of the origin 

 and early history of man. But the question has many subdivisions. 

 He intended the several lectures to be separate sketches of those sub- 

 divisions of the field of discussion — mere introductions to their proper 

 study. His views are stated, therefore, in round terms. Nothing is 

 closely reasoned out. Much is left to the logical instinct, and more to 

 the literary education, of the reader. Reference is everywhere made 

 to sources of information within easy reach of all. Even the style of an 

 essay has been avoided. The book is merely a series of familiar con- 

 versations upon the current topics of interest in the scientific world." 

 This spirited book was noticed in Volume XX of " The Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly," and the following estimate was given of it : " We have 

 gone through Mr. Lesley's book with interest and profit — pleased with 

 its brilliant and forcible passages, which are frequent ; instructed by 

 its learning and its abounding facts, and stimulated by its incisive 

 observations and its forcible arguments. But the work is strongly 

 stamped with the author's individuality, and its supplementary chap- 

 ters especially, fresh and breezy as they are, contain various opinions 

 to which we find it impossible to subscribe. But, notwithstanding its 

 faults, the work is original, helpful, and invigorating, and those who 

 are concerned to note the drift of modern inquiry will be sure to find 

 it serviceable." 



