322 



NATURE 



[Feb. 24, 1876 



assured that this claim shall not be forgotten amid the 

 triumphs of advancing science." 



The recommendations, we are confident, will meet with 

 the approval of all moderate persons on both sides. 

 Indeed, some may hi inclined to think that Science has 

 made too great concessions to popular feeling ; that she 

 has made concessions all who take the trouble to read the 

 Report and evidence will alio .v. The reasonable opponents 

 of vivisection will no doubt also be prepared to make 

 concessions, as they must admit that, after the evidence 

 adduced in this inquiry, its uncompromising suppression 

 would be a calamity to humanity ; and they must also 

 admit that the outcry of " cruelty to animals " has had 

 a very slender justification. We hope the Report 

 will speedily be brought before Parliament, and the re- 

 commendations essentially adopted, so that both for the 

 credit of science and for the satisfaction of popular feeling 

 the practice may be carried on under well-defined and 

 universally understood regulations. 



« THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD" 

 The Geological Record /or 1874. An Account of Works 

 on Geology, Mineralogy, and Palaeontology, published 

 during the year. Edited by William Whitaker B.A., 

 F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of England. (London : 

 Taylor and Francis, 1875.) 



1"'HE late Sir Charles Lyell used to relate how, on the 

 occasion of a visit which he paid to M. Deslong- 

 champs at Caen, the eminent French palaeontologist rose 

 from the piles of books amid which he was working, and 

 exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, " Let us devoutly thank 

 Heaven that our lot is not cast with the next generation of 

 geological workers ! — for how they will manage to grapple 

 with the ever-increasing literature of the science I am at 

 a loss to conceive." The difficulty which Deslongchamps 

 thus playfully anticipated is now a present and pressing 

 one, which, it is not too much to assert, is almost painfully 

 felt by every scientific student and worker. While, on the 

 one hand, it is absolutely impossible that any man can 

 read everything that issues from the press relating even 

 to his own department of science, yet, on the other, no 

 one can afford to neglect the results which are being 

 obtained by his contemporaries. It is sad to remember 

 that a large part of the energy of the illustrious Dalton 

 was wasted — owing to his not being able to make himself 

 acquainted with what other chemists of his day were 

 accomplishing — in solving problems which had been 

 already completely disposed of. And we are persuaded 

 that the painful questions of priority in discovery which 

 frequently arise between the workers in the same branch 

 of science ought to be referred, not to the existence of 

 petty jealousies or of a disposition to take unworthy 

 advantages, but to the difficulty which each investigator 

 finds in consulting the latest published results of his 

 fellow-workers in the same paths of inquiry. 



So far as relates to the scientific memoirs of past years, 

 the Royal Society has conferred an inestimable boon on 

 the labourers in every dtpaitment of science by the pub- 

 lication of its admirable '• Catalogue," for the appearance 

 of the first supplement to which we are now anxiously 

 looking iorward. Aided by a grant from the British 

 Association, too, the " Zoological Record " gives a yearly 

 summary of the work which is being accomplished in that 



department of science. It has long been felt as a serious 

 and yearly increasing want — though one which has been 

 already to some extent met by publications in France, Ger- 

 many, and Switzerland — that no similar work of reference 

 for the geological sciences has hitherto appeared in this 

 country. We are now happy to inform the readers of 

 Nature that this want has been very admirably supplied 

 by the volume, of which the title appears at the head of 

 the present article. 



In the preface to this work the editor gracefully notices 

 the important services rendered by his fellow-workers, 

 but he has not referred to the great difficulties which 

 attended the first establishment of this important year- 

 book of reference ; for the overcoming of which difficul- 

 ties we are mainly indebted to his own energy and perse- 

 verance. When the proposal for this work was first 

 drawn up by Mr. Whitaker — whose well-known works on 

 Tertiary Geology, and especially those relating to the 

 vicinity of the metropolis, gave him such claims on the 

 confidence of geologists — the Council of the British Asso- 

 ciation did not find itself in a position to accord to it 

 immediately the same assistance as it annually gives to 

 the " Zoological Record." Undeterred by this preliminary 

 difficulty, however, Mr. Whitaker determined to proceed 

 with his task unaided. A list of guarantors was formed, 

 who agreed to indemnify the editor against pecuniary 

 loss ; and among those who thus signified their sense of 

 the importance of the work, we find the names of Lyell, 

 Poulett-Scrope, and Logan, who have not lived to witness 

 its publication, together with those of almost all the 

 leaders of geological science in this country. Happily, 

 the sale of the work has sufficed, even during this its first 

 year of publication, to cover all expenses ; and a grant 

 from the British Association will serve to remove any 

 anxieties which the editor might have felt as to its future. 



In the plan of the work we think that Mr. Whitaker has 

 exercised a very wise discretion. He has not attempted 

 anything like reviews or critical notices of the various books 

 and memoirs which he catalogues. In the publications 

 in which this has been done, like the " Die Fortschritte 

 auf dem Gebiete der Geologie, 1872," edited by Dr. 

 Hermann J. Klein, or the " Revue Gdologique Suisse 

 pour I'Annde 1874" of Ernest Favre, we have nothing 

 like the complete work of reference supplied by the pub- 

 lication of the " Geological Record." In the latter, the 

 notices of the various contributions to geological science 

 are confined to terse statements of the subjects treated in 

 them, with an enumeration of the plates and maps by j 

 which they are illustrated. Where, however, a short I 

 account of recent discovery or a summary of a newi 

 classification could be given in a few lines, or the bearing j 

 of a memoir on the progress of science briefly indicated, 

 this has been often well done in the work before us. 



The difficult task of classifying the memoirs according} 

 to the various subjects of which they treat has been, onj 

 the whole, very successfully accomplished ; and for the! 

 general superintendence of the work, Mr. Whitaker has' 

 secured the aid of a number of well-known cultivators 

 of different departments of the science to act as sub- 

 editors. Mr. Topley takes the departments of British 

 and Economic Geology ; Mr. Labour deals with the 

 works relating to Europe, the Arctic Regions, and Ame- 

 rica : Mr. Drew with those on Asia; and Mr. Robe 



