LITERARY NOTICES. 



8+5 



cassion of the problems at issue between them, 

 and, perchance, arrive at a friendly solution 

 of them. 



I imagined it a place in which the fullest 

 stores of industrial knowledge would be made 

 accessible to the public ; in which the higher 

 questions of commerce and industry would be 

 systematically studied and elucidated ; and 

 where, as in an industrial university, the 

 whole technical education of the country 

 might find its center and crown. 



If I earnestly desire to see such an insti- 

 tution created, it is not because I think that 

 or anything else will put an end to pauperism 

 and want— as somebody has absurdly sug- 

 gested — but because I believe it will supply a 

 foundation for that scientific organization of 

 our industries which the changed conditions 

 of the times render indispensable to their 

 prosperity. 



I do not think I am far wrong in assum- 

 ing that we are entering, indeed have already 

 entered, upon the most serious struggle for 

 existence to which this country has ever been 

 committed. The latter years of the century 

 promise to see us embarked in an industrial 

 war of far more serious import than the mili- 

 tary wars of its opening y r ears. On the East, 

 the most systematically instructed and best- 

 informed people in Europe are our competi- 

 tors ; on the West, an energetic offshoot of 

 our own stock, grown bigger than its parent, 

 enters upon the struggle possessed of natural 

 resources to which we can make no preten- 

 sion and with every prospect of soon pos- 

 sessing that cheap labor by which they may 

 be effectually utilized. 



Many circumstances tend to justify the 

 hope that we may hold our own if we are care- 

 ful to " organize victory." But, to those who 

 reflect seriously on the prospects of the popu- 

 lation of Lancashire and Yorkshire — should 

 the time ever arrive when the goods which 

 are produced by their labor and their skill are 

 to be had cheaper elsewhere — to those who 

 remember the cotton famine, and reflect how 

 much worse a customer famine would be, the 

 situation appears very grave. 



Such an institution as Professor 

 Huxley here outlines, founded under 

 the auspices which surround this enter- 

 prise, would undoubtedly give an im- 

 mense impetus to efforts for the eleva- 

 tion of industrial art; and its establish- 

 ment, if effected, will mark an epoch in 

 the history of the practical applications 

 of science. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Geographical and Geological Dis- 

 tribution op Animals. By Professor 

 Angelo Heilprin. " International Sci- 

 entific Series." Vol. LVII. D. Appleton 

 k Co. Pp. 435. Price, $2. 

 This volume sustains the high character 

 of the International Scientific Series, and 

 is a timely one, as the need of a compact 

 work on this fascinating study has long been 

 recognized. Wallace's larger work, in two 

 volumes, while graphic in its method and 

 full of interesting reading, is somewhat an- 

 tiquated in its classification, a fault from 

 which this book is not quite free. 



The reader will find brought together a 

 remarkable array of facts from various 

 authors bearing upon the many questions 

 involved in the subject. A vivid sketch is 

 given of the apparently startling contradic- 

 tions in the distribution of animals, the 

 well-known case of faunal separation be- 

 tween the Islands of Bali and Lombok being 

 cited among others. The author then says : 

 " Mysterious as these various phenomena of 

 distribution may appear, they yet have all 

 their logical explanation. A quarter of a 

 century ago, when the doctrine of independ- 

 ent creation still held sway over the minds 

 of most naturalists, and when the organic 

 universe was reflected in the eye of the in- 

 vestigator as an incongruous agglomeration 

 of disjointed parts, there was, indeed, no 

 necessity for specially accounting for the 

 facts, since they were conceived to be such 

 by reason of a previous ordination. Now, 

 however, when the full value of the evolu- 

 tionary process is recognized, and animate 

 nature has come to be looked upon as a con- 

 crete whole, bearing special relations to its 

 numberless parts, each individual fact seeks 

 its own explanation, which explanation must 

 of necessity stand in direct harmony with 

 some previously observed fact. When, 

 therefore, we seek to unravel the tangle of 

 zoogeography and to harmonize its apparent 

 incongruities, we must at the outset admit 

 that distribution, such as it is, is the out- 

 come of definite interacting laws — laws 

 which stand in relation to each other as ab- 

 solutely as they do in any other field of ac- 

 tion — and not a hap-hazard disposition, as 

 some would lead us to suppose, setting all 

 inquiry at defiance." 



