£072.) * Notices of Books. 85 
Rudimentary Treatise on Geology. Part I1.—Historical Geology. 
By Rateu Tarte, Assoc. Lin. Soc., F.G.S, Corr. Mem. Acad. 
Sciences Philad., &c. London: Lockwood and Co. 1871. 
Tus little work, partly based on Major-Gen. Portlock’s Rudi- 
ments of Geology, is one of the admirable Weale’s series. This 
second volume forms a complete epitome of the “ History of the 
British Stratified Rocks.” All the principal varieties of fossils 
are illustrated. The reputation of Mr. Tate as a geologist is a 
sufficient recommendation that the work will be found accurate 
in detail. 
The Great Pyramid of Gizeh. By A. F. D. WackerBarrtu, 
F.R.A.S., Professor of Mathematics in the University of 
Upsala. Translated from the ‘ Tidskrift fir Matematik och 
Fysik.” Southampton: Gutch and Cox. 1871. 
Tue Great Pyramid constitutes a subject which is now being 
investigated by an increasing number of researchers, and from 
numerous points of view. The literature of the subject is rapidly 
growing, and it therefore becomes us, when—as it has already 
been said in our pages—‘‘ theories of such momentous import- 
ance are in the balance,” not to pass over unnoticed any contri- 
bution thereto which may be fairly expected to tend further 
in the direction of unveiling the still deeper hidden interpretations 
of realities, which have remained shut up unheeded in _per- 
durable granite and limestone from pre-Abrahamitic ages, down 
to these latter days, when the light primevally enclosed in 
thickest masonry of truest form in line and angle seems ready 
to illumine whole horizons of high antiquity, which have become 
overlain with multiplied wrappings of misty scales concreted in 
succeeding darker ages. 
Under the principle of founding our acceptance or rejection of 
theories whenever and by whomsoever propounded, only when 
they accord or disagree with hard facts, we have examined the 
latest contribution to the literature of the Great Pyramid, 
whereof the title appears in the heading of this article. Much 
pleased, indeed, should we have been if that we could add 
the work had withstood the test; glad should we have been 
to sound abroad that its conclusions are founded on a basis as 
stable as that of the material Pyramid itself; yet in a sentence 
it must be said, that as the root is planted in fiction, it foreshadows 
for itself as certain, and like unto that of all half-done work, 
a precarious and at most but an ephemeral life. 
Yet such an assertion on our part is valueless without evidence 
of being rightly founded. We will, then, endeavour in a few suc- 
ceeding pages to show forth the true character of the work 
which has caused us to conclude as aforesaid. 
The very opening sentence of the work declares that “the 
number of Egyptian Pyramids amounts to several hundreds,” 
