416 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 
careful geological observations, which he published in the accounts of 
his journeys to Gotland, to Oeland, and, above all, to Westrogothia 
and Scania. He drew a section of the strata composing Kinnekulle, 
and paralleled them with beds in other parts of Sweden, subsequently 
using his knowledge to interpret the structure of Scania. “Thus,” 
said he, “the section of Kinnekulle serves as introduction to Strata 
terrae or the anatomy of the earth-crust, not only here in Westro- 
gothia, but probably over the greater part of the world.” He recog- 
nised that the strata had been deposited in the sea throughout many 
long-vanished periods, and attempted to classify them according to 
their relative age. Thus Linnaeus laid the foundations of the 
Wernerian system before Werner was born; and it was not long 
before his fellow-countryman Bergman erected upon that foundation 
the actual framework that Werner filled in. Other Scandinavians 
might have been mentioned, such as Gyllenhahl, with his truly re- 
markable palaeontological study of Hchinosphaera, and Hermelin, 
with his geological maps of Southern Norway and Sweden. The 
most curious omission, however, considering the occasion of the 
lectures, is that of citizens of the United States. Featherstonhaugh 
and H. D. Rogers are just alluded to, but that remarkable and much- 
abused geological genius, Ebenezer Emmons, is not even named. 
We have not mentioned these omissions for the sake of fault- 
finding, but as further evidence of the amount of good work done by 
many whom it is the fashion of the present day to disregard. We 
sympathise warmly, as we have already said, with Professor Miall’s 
recent plea for a more historical method of teaching the natural 
sciences, and, as a help in that direction, no book is better adapted 
than the present. But those who imagine, if such there be, that they 
have passed beyond the student stage, would yet do well to dip now 
and again into the battered volumes that grow dusty on topmost 
shelves. There are many observations and many shrewd suggestions 
hidden in those old books, made perhaps too early in the day to have 
taken effect, but waiting to be applied by us now with our modern 
knowledge and methods. Rosinus, for instance, 178 years ago, de- 
scribed the course of the nerve-canals, “foramina jure meritoque pro 
nervorum canalibus reputanda,’ in the cup of the lily-encrinite, in 
language that Dr W. B. Carpenter (the modern discoverer of that 
nerve-system) could not have bettered. The fact is that the worth of 
a man’s work does not necessarily depend on the number of his years 
or on the century in which he lives. 
Some of the most valuable passages in this book are those in 
which Sir Archibald uses the weight of his experience to enforce 
the morals to be derived from the study of the older writers. In 
one place he quotes Fitton’s review of the Wernerian school: “A 
Wernerian geognost is chiefly employed in placing the phenomena he 
observes in the situations which his master has assigned to them in 
his plan of the mineral kingdom. It is not so much to describe the 
strata as they are, and to compare them with rocks of the same 
character in other countries, as to decide whether they belong to this 
or that series of depositions, supposed once to have taken place over 
the whole earth, . . . to ascertain their place in an ideal world.” 
Similar criticism might justly be applied to-day in various branches 
