76 



NA TV RE 



[November 25, 1897 



as forty years ago." The criminal statistics of other 

 countries, notably of England and Belgium, can happily 

 show different figures, judging by the numbers incar- 

 cerated now and in previous years, the only trust- 

 worthy test indeed. Dr. Christison seems inclined to 

 lay too much stress upon prison systems as affecting 

 the increase and decrease of crime. Where they are 

 manifestly bad, as it is to be feared they are in a very 

 large proportion of cases in the United States, they 

 may manufacture criminals. For example, there is no 

 more fruitful source of crime than the indiscriminate 

 association of prisoners of all classes and categories 

 which is still very general in American prisons. For 

 one Elmira, with its ultra- tenderness for the dishonest, 

 there are hundreds of county gaols where no sort of 

 care is taken to separate the inmates, whether young or 

 old, innocent or guilty ; and it is where this separation 

 has been most strictly enforced, as with us, that crime 

 has most appreciably diminished. 



But the penal system, however carefully and intelli- 

 gently worked, is but a small contributory cause to 

 reduction. That is to be found rather in the newer 

 and more enlightened processes of deferred sentences 

 for first offenders and of systematic child rescue, 

 both based upon the e.xcellent principle that crime 

 should be checked in the bud. Dr. Christison enun- 

 ciates a truism when he declares that crime is frequently 

 associated with bodily and brain disease. No one 

 denies this ; it is, too often the poor invertebrate 

 creatures who have no sinew, moral or physical, who 

 lapse into misdeeds, and they deserve pity rather than 

 punishment. But these do not make up the sum total 

 of the great army of crime ; they do not include the 

 stalwart, able-bodied habitual criminal — the real crux of 

 modern penology — who has adopted law-breaking as a 

 business, and whom nothing, humanely speaking, will 

 cure. To apply Dr. Christison's kindly milk and water 

 treatment to these would be a mischievous misuse of 

 the power of the law, the first duty of which is to protect 

 the law-abiding from the law-breaking. The habitual 

 criminal should have neither truce nor peace. Penal 

 science is fast tending to establish the somewhat 

 paradoxical apothegm of a well-known writer who has 

 said that offenders may be divided into two great classes: 

 " those who should never go into prison and those who 

 should never be let out " ; the first offender who should 

 be left at large on condition that he does not again go 

 wrong, and the habitual criminal who is retained in- 

 definitely, or until he gives reasonable promise that he 

 will not persistently misuse his freedom. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Chauncy Maples., D.D., F.R.G.S. A Sketch of his Life, 

 with Selectiotis from . his Letters. By his Sister. Pp. 

 403. (London : Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897.) 



The publication of this memoir of Dr. Chauncy 

 Maples — a pioneer missionary in East Central Africa for 

 twenty years — reveals that sympathetic interest in science 

 which has been strikingly noteworthy in some of the 

 most remarkable missionaries of our time. In 1881 Mr. 

 Maples, then stationed at Masasi, made a journey of 900 

 miles to the Meto country, and in this and other ways 

 contributed to our knowledge of the geography of East 



NO. T465, VOL. 57] 



Africa. His papers were appreciated by the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, of which he was a Fellow. And he 

 quite entered into the spirit of the recent development of 

 Nyasaland at the hands of the British administrators, 

 founding and editing the Nyasa News., which was printed 

 on the island of Likoma by his native boys. Sir Harry 

 Johnston, K.C.M.G., contributed to it, and writes 

 cordially of the late Bishop in his recent book on 

 " British Central Africa." Sir Harry was almost the last 

 European to see him alive ; for a few days afterwards he 

 was drowned in the Lake Nyasa, September 3, 1895, on 

 his way to his post. In the Bishop's last letter but one, 

 written, of course, before the knighthood, he says : '' I 

 was more struck than ever with the Commissioner's 

 cleverness and accomplishments and his power of doing 

 so many things, as he does, so very well. He is certainly 

 a very remarkable man indeed." 



On the other hand, Mr. G. F. Scott-Elliot, a scientific 

 traveller well known to the readers of Nature, looked 

 upon Chauncy Maples as "an ideal missionary," and 

 described him as " one whose sympathies extend even to 

 Europeans." Several times in the letters now published ^ 

 reference is gratefully made to the geological works of 

 Sir Archibald Geikie. In a private letter dated Likoma, 

 March 14, 1888, Archdeacon Chauncy Maples has the 

 followmg striking and sympathetic reference to Charles 

 Darwin : — • 



" It would seem that part of his nature adapted to the 

 reception and cultivation of religious truth got atrophied 

 by disuse, and hence his discarding of Christianity. 

 These things are great mysteries, and when we think of 

 so great and really good a man as Darwin was, we ought 

 to avoid all appearance even of seeming to know how he 

 stood in God's sight when his probation was over and his 

 soul returned to God who gave it. . . . Another great 

 point about Darwin was that he never did or said any- 

 thing that could be construed into a desire to disturb the 

 faith of others ; if evolution has disturbed it, it is their 

 fault and not his. I confess to having a good deal of 

 belief in evolution ; but it has never disturbed my faith 

 in revelation — no, not one jot " (p. 294). 



The late Bishop was, like the friend and colleague who 

 has succeeded him as Archdeagon, the Rev. W. P. John- 

 son, a graduate of University College, Oxford. His 

 successor, the present Bishop of Likoma, Dr. J. E. Hine, 

 is also an Oxford man, having graduated in science both 

 in Oxford and London. Of the latter University he is 

 M.D. It is also remarkable that another South African 

 Bishop had a distinguished scientific career, both at 

 London and Cambridge. The Bishop of Bloemfontein, 

 the Right Rev. J. W. Hicks, is Doctor both of Medicine 

 and of Theology. He is M.D. Lond., D.D. and Sc.D. 

 Camb., and late Fellow and Science Tutor of Sidney 

 Sussex College, Cambridge. J. F. H. 



Les Ballons-Sondes. Par M. de Fonvielle. (Paris : 

 Librairie Gauthier-Villars, 1898.) 



Within the last seven years a new epoch has dawned 

 upon the science of aerial travel and investigation. 



While the more directly practical advances in flying 

 machines and balloon navigation have caught the popular 

 fancy, a less conspicuous but more valuable means of 

 extending our present knowledge of atmospheric physics 

 has been supplied by the recently organised flight of 

 small, specially constructed balloons provided with self- 

 recording apparatus which, without the deterring weight 

 of observers, have been able to explore regions of the 

 atmosphere far beyond the limits of human endurance. 



M. de Fonvielle, the celebrated French aeronaut, has 

 brought together the results so far attained in a neat little 

 brochure entitled " Les Ballons-Sondes," or " sounding 

 balloons." Perhaps " exploring balloons " would be a 

 freer and more euphonious translation. 



Here we have in four chapters a clear and simple 





