1874.] Notices of Books. 523 
denied either that blood transudes through the walls of the ven- 
tricles, or that the pulmonary veins bring back to the left side of 
the heart air commingled with the blood, he asserts that the left 
ventricle has no other function than that of impelling the blood 
brought to it through the arteries, which themselves contain 
blood and nothing else, not air, nor vital spirit, but blood purified 
by its passage through the lungs, and so made apt for the 
nourishment of the whole body. And second. That while the 
arteries thus distribute everywhere the fresh pure blood, the 
veins with which they communicate bring back that same blood, 
no longer pure, to the right side of the heart, whence it is once 
more transmitted to the lungs, thence carried again revivified to 
the left ventricle, and then once more distributed throughout the 
body, its changes not being those of an ebbing and a flowing 
tide, but the ceaseless current of an onward rushing river.” 
The doctrine of the circulation of the blood was taught as early 
as 1615 by Harvey, but it was not till the year 1628 that he pub- 
lished his ‘‘ Exercitatio de Motu Cordis.” The conclusion of the 
oration is devoted to a somewhat graceful allusion to benefactors 
of the College :—‘‘ Benefactors—those who have done us good, 
or have shown us kindness; in vulgar sort, those to whom we owe 
gifts of money, grants of land, something or other that can be 
bought or sold in open market. According to this reading, few 
indeed have been our benefactors.”’ All the money properties of 
the College do not exceed £600 a year, and the plate not more 
than £20. The College, says Dr. West, will bear no comparison 
with the magnificent Halls of the City Companies; and then 
later on he says—‘‘ Our great benefactors are they who have left 
us the inheritance of their example.” Such as Sydenham, and 
Meade, Jenner, and Bright, and pre-eminently Harvey. 
Divine Revelation, or Pseudo-Science? An Essay. By R. G. 
SucKLING Brown, B.D. London: Longmans, Green, and 
Co. 1874. 
Tuis is one of the many anti-Darwinian books, which the author 
calls ‘‘our form of resisting the hypothesis of evolution, and 
kindred pseudo-sciences.” We fear we must pronounce Mr. 
Brown’s book to be illogical and unscientific, and of little value 
even to the opponents of the Darwinian theory. We give the 
concluding lines, and so leave the book to the judgment of the 
reader :—‘‘ The admirable adaptation of the bird’s wing; the 
contrivance of the human fore-arm, hand, and foot ; the poise of 
suns and planets in infinite space: their accelerated and dimi- 
nished velocities in the ratio of their distance from their centres 
of attraction or gravitation; the apparatus of the infusorial 
Rotifer, the tyrant over the inhabitants of a drop of water; the 
delivery of its contemplated victim by its provided apparatus for 
