1875.] Notices of Books. 371% 
mowes” at the great naturalist and his fellow-labourers, in a 
manner more simian than scientific. But there are no facts 
which have not been already taken into account; no arguments 
which have not been repeatedly refuted; no attempts to 
supersede the doctrine of Evolution by any profounder and wider 
generalisation, or to account for the phenomena which before its 
promulgation were unconnected riddles. There is, indeed, a 
new epithet, ‘‘ pithecolatry!” It is remarked that if species are 
not permanent, then the title ‘‘ Origin of Species” involves a 
contradiction. How little such an Old Bailey quibble affects 
the matter at issue is self-evident. To all this Mr. Darwin may 
well reply, ‘‘nolo laudari.”. M. Thomson is prone to Latin 
quotations, and can doubtless supply the rest. 
It can serve no good purpose to wade any further into this 
chaos of philosophy, ‘falsely so-called,” of theology, politics, 
morals, ethnology, and gossip, which the Author has presumed 
to designate ‘‘ Absolute Science.” Of that ‘‘ pourriture” of the 
modern world to which he so often refers, this book is certainly 
not the least offensive symptom. 
Fragmentary Papers on Science and Other Subjects. By the late 
Sir Henry Hotuanp, Bart. Edited by his son, the Rev. 
F. J. Hottanp. London: Longmans and Co. 
For us, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a strange 
interest attaches to the reminiscences of one who may be said to 
have stood by the cradle of modern science. ‘* More than sixty 
years ago,” says Sir H. Holland, ‘‘ Davy showed me, at the 
Royal Institution, the minute globules of sodium and potassium 
just obtained from the fixed alkalies. In the same laboratory, 
the birth-place of so many great discoveries, I witnessed his first 
experiments on the chemical actions of the voltaic current. Very 
few years later I heard Dalton expound, for the first time, that 
Atomic Theory which gave the earliest impulse to those researches 
of which organic chemistry, present and prospective, is the most 
wonderful exponent. Yet later, in the theatre of the Royal 
Institution, I was one of a small party to whom Faraday showed 
the spark he had just succeeded in drawing from the magnet, 
the forerunner of those marvellous powers which have since been 
elicited from the same source.” Nor did this early interest in 
Science forsake the author in his later days. To the last he 
must have watched with eager interest the progress of discovery, 
and have kept himself acquainted not merely with the methods 
and the general results of Science, but even with the minutest 
details of modern research. 
Still it will be felt by the reader that Sir H. Holland writes 
about Science rather as might a refined and thoughtful scholar 
