304 Analysis of Scientific Books. 



the per-oration of this lecture is truly delectable, and we regret, 

 we can only find room for an abstract of it, in which, however, 

 we shall use Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney's own words. 



" I cannot avoid coming to the conclusion in my own mind, that 

 the regularity, the beauty, and the harmony, of all the changes 

 which take place in the material world will, one day or other, 

 be found to depend on the one grand disposing cause of elec- 

 tricity." And again, after observing that the functions of ani- 

 mals are dependant upon chemical changes, " I expect," he 

 says, " it will not be long before it will be as universally admitted, 

 that those chemical changes are brought about by electrical 

 causes." 



" That organic matter has some influence on the mind, cannot 

 for a moment be doubted, and that the stomach is the chief source 

 of this influence seems equally certain. Further it is well known, 

 that a sympathy of the most intimate nature exists between the 

 skin and the stomach. Now, holding, as I do, that all organic 

 changes are in some way or other dependant on electrical agency, 

 and that that agency is mainly available to us by means of the 

 atmosphere, which serves as a conductor of electricity between 

 the clouds to the earth and the human body, can it be considered 

 as too fanciful a supposition, if I attribute the various changes of 

 state in the human temperament, especially in persons of a ner- 

 vous and irritable habit of body, to corresponding changes in the 

 electrical state of the surrounding media, such as the earth and 

 the atmosphere?" pp. 142, 143. 



Now without meaning any disrespect to our author, we must 

 beg leave to set this down as an unequivocal sample of that fi- 

 gure of speech usually called nonsense; and he should remember 

 that much may be said in a lecture, and even plausibly urged in 

 the warmth of argument, which will not bear to be printed and 

 published. 



We have of late heard a great deal of talk respecting the tempe- 

 rature of mines, and the evidence thus afforded of a source of heat 

 within the earth ; upon this subject we have always been sceptical ; 

 and rather than adopt the preposterous Beccherian notion of a 

 central fire, have contented ourselves with viewing the phenomena 

 as dependant partly upon the increased density of the air and its 

 consequent diminished capacity for heat, at great depths, and 

 partly upon other more obvious causes ; but Mr. Gurney in his 

 lecture on combustion, has set us right upon this head. " Com- 

 bustion is one of those grand operations which are constantly 

 going on within the bowels of the earth, where it serves the im- 

 portant purposes of composing and decomposing an immense 

 variety of substances necessary to the renovations and revolutions 

 which are perpetually going on among all organic as well as in- 

 organic matter." p. 151. 



