466 NATURAL SCIENCE. June, 



The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood. A second appeal to common sense 

 from the extravagance of some recent geology. By Sir Henry H. Howorth, 

 K.C.I.E., M.P., F.G.S. 2 vols. 8vo. Pp. xxvii and 920. London : Sampson 

 Low & Co., 1893. Price 30s. 



Sir Henry Howorth, in the two volumes which now he before us, 

 stands forth as the champion of an almost universal deluge. It is 

 not, he is careful to explain, the deluge of Noah ; but it appears to 

 be a considerably worse one, which exterminated the mammoth and 

 could transport erratic blocks as large as houses across country for 

 distances of many leagues. In fact the book is a nine-hundred page 

 supplement to his bulky volume on the Mammoth and the Flood, and 

 is to be followed by still another one. It is not altogether easy to 

 understand the reason of the appearance of this mass of undigested 

 extracts. The new book seems to be intended as a sort of homeo- 

 pathic remedy for the "Glacial Nightmare"; but, unlike most 

 homeopaths, the author, instead of using a small dose, attempts to 

 cure by the exhibition of a far more serious incubus than the one we 

 are suffering from. 



The method adopted in these volumes is to put together under 

 sev^eral heads extracts from various opinions as to the mode of 

 formation of the Drift or Diluvium. We thus find in the first three 

 chapters quotations from writers between 1719 and 1840, who referred 

 the transportation of erratic blocks to the agency of water. Then 

 follow chapters on the champions of icebergs, and of glaciers, and 

 two more on the "growth and culmination of the glacial nightmare." 

 We read next a chapter on the " alleged recurrence of glacial epochs 

 and on supposed inter-glacial beds," followed by others entitled 

 "appeals to transcendental physics and astronomy "and "meteorology." 

 Chapters XI. to XVII. represent, apparently, the views in favour 

 with the author, for they contain selected extracts from the evidence 

 of such witnesses as could testify in any degree against recurrent ice 

 ages, against a glacial period in the southern hemisphere, against the 

 power of ice to do anything in particular, and against the occurrence 

 at any period in regions now temperate of accumulations of ice other 

 than large glaciers. Chapter XVIII., the author's own, is entitled 

 " The distribution of the drift can only be explained by invoking a 

 great diluvial catastrophe." 



Sir Henry Howorth's volumes will be useful as giving references 

 to old and forgotten writers on diluvial theories, and we have our- 

 selves noticed several that were new to us. The more modern 

 portions, and those relating to glaciation, are most imperfect. The 

 Scandinavian writers who have done so much to increase our know- 

 ledge, are, for instance, almost ignored, or only quoted at second- 

 hand from the "The Great Ice Age"; even the English and 

 American literature of recent years has not been properly examined. 

 After going through the two volumes carefully, and noting how time 

 after time the author brings forward untrustworthy witnesses in favour 

 of his own case, and omits to call the strongest on the other side, we 

 cannot recommend the "Glacial Nightmare" to the student as 

 giving either an accurate or impartial summary of the present state 

 of our knowledge. We observe that the volumes are marred also 

 by an enormous number of errors and misprints. Only ninety of 

 tliese are corrected in the author's own "table of errata," but ten of the 

 corrections are themselves wrong ! Where quotations have had their 

 punctuation or wording altered, inverted commas should not be used ; 

 and we still less like to see them inclosing inaccurate translations 



