Sept. 12, 1878] 



NATURE 



5^5 



to the reign of Henry III., and is written on naturally 

 surer ground and the interest is better sustained. The 

 stories of the Saxon and Dahish conquests are well told 

 according to the most modern versions, and introduce 

 the newest approved spelling of historical names. We 

 can almost follow the exact steps by which the Normans 

 took possession of the Fenland and how they kept it by 

 building fortress dwellings, simply massive round or 

 square towers, which the more civilised Saxon noble 

 would never have made his home. This chapter is illus- 

 trated with engravings of coins and of one of the rare 

 British circular bronze shields. 



Chapter IV., on Language, and Chapter V., on the Dis- 

 solution of Monasteries, are also by Mr. Miller. Chapter 

 VI., by Mr. Skertchly, treats of the attempts made to drain 

 the fens, a subject well worked out by Sedgwick and his 

 scientific assistants. The author's views, although pro- 

 bably correct, are put very decidedly, and in places 

 plentifully sprinkled with notes of exclamation. The 

 following from p. 158 will serve to illustrate the style : — 



" How can it be shown that these districts on the same 

 level, with interweaving watercourses and co-equal de- 

 siderata, were so distinct that they should be set at 

 variance like a trio of mongrels over a meat biscuit ? Yet 

 such has been the disastrous result." 



It appears to be Mr. Skertchly's opinion that the one 

 essential to an engineer who undertakes drainage works 

 is to understand "Mr. Tylor's laws" (Mr. Alfred Tylor, 

 F.G.S.). In Chapter VII., a continuation of the last, 

 the writer goes out of his way to object to the absurdity of 

 the Hse of the time-honoured expression, " lands watered 

 by rivers." Yet the term is right, for a land of many 

 rivers is more moist and watered than a land without, 

 and rivers do literally water the lands through which they 

 flow. They do it by percolation, overflow, and mist. 

 For instance, not only does the Nile, but rivers all over 

 the world, the Thames itself among them, water their 

 level lands by flood at certain seasons, by mist at night. 



The Wash, a subject on which we naturally looked for 

 a good deal of information, is too briefly disposed of in 

 a chapter of only five pages. The next, on Meteorology, 

 is sixty-seven pages long, and bristles with tables which 

 in a popular work would have found a more appropriate 

 place in the Appendix, since their presence in the middle 

 of the work cuts it in two. The botanical sketch by Mr. 

 W. Marshall would have been more welcome had it been 

 longer, and we should have been glad to have seen more 

 of the Fen rarities illustrated. The history of the spread 

 of Anacharis is likely enough to be the correct one, but 

 why is the name of the plant in the illustration Elodia 

 canadensis^ and Anacharis alsinasirum in the text. The 

 Fungi, although not very numerous, have appropriately a 

 section to themselves. It is strange that the writer 

 should speak doubtingly of the occurrence of any fungi 

 in the Carboniferous, since their presence there is now a 

 well known fact. The eleventh chapter treats of the pre- 

 historic fauna of the Fenland, and is so full of errors that 

 it is to be regretted that, as in other instances, a specialist 

 was not intrusted to write it. Space will only permit to 

 notice a few of the inaccuracies. At p. 326, Hipparion 

 is said to be " a horse-like animal with antlers like a stag,'' 

 and this is the whole description. The table, p. 327, is 

 not a complete list, and we know on the authority of 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins, that it contains besides, a number of 

 species which have not hitherto been found in the beds to 

 which they are ascribed ; it separates Ursiis ferox and 

 priscus which are synonyms, and persists, which is the 

 case throughout the book, in calling Lemmus, " Lemnus.' ' 

 The table at p. 328 is a marvel of careless spellings, none 

 of which are included in the list of corrections at the 

 beginning of the book, which we are "earnestly requested" 

 to make with pen and ink. In another table Bos brachy- 

 ceros is said to be "a variety" of B. longifrons, although 

 these are admittedly synonyms. 



The limits of a review, however, compel us to pass on 

 at once to the chapter on Geology, with which especial 

 fault is to be found. In the first place, from the nature 

 of the book it is evident, as already intimated, that it 

 is not intended to be specially consulted by geologists, 

 and the fact that a survey memoir on this district, in 

 which Mr. Skertchly was concerned, had already appeared, 

 renders it quite unlikely that it would be. Mr. Skertchly 

 recognises this by prefacing his subject with a perfectly 

 elementary treatise on the science. Instead of this circum- 

 stance inducing him to guard his statements with more 

 than ordinary care, he absolutely revels in the oppor- 

 tunity of airing his infallibility, as if without fear of con- 

 tradiction. The theories of those whom he mentions as 

 friends are everywhere brought in, those of his opponents 

 mostly ignored. Thus Evans's "Ancient Stone Imple- 

 ments of Great Britain," a work in which implements 

 from the Fenlands have been described, is not even 

 alluded to, although the author appears to have made 

 use of it. General readers should in fairness have 

 been cautioned that CroU's theory is not supported by 

 geological evidence, thousands and thousands of feet 

 of consecutively deposited strata showing no trace of 

 cold periods, much less of glaciation ; that Geikie's 

 theory of an ice sheet is not generally accepted by the 

 Geological Society, as even this session's discussions 

 show ; that Tylor's Pluvial periods have but few 

 adherents. By the way, the Pluvial period is here in- 

 geniously reduced to local showers produced by the 

 evaporation of melting snow and ice, although Mr. Tylor 

 himself disclaims for it all connection with ice action, 

 and claims on the contrary that it was of great intensity 

 and long duration. Mr. Skertchly is so fully impressed 

 with the correctness of the view he happens to take of 

 things that he announces that his alleged discoveries 

 have made the Brandon Beds of "surpassing interest "^ 

 (a favourite term with him), " for ever setting at rest 

 the question of whether man did or did not exist during 

 the great cycle of the glacial period." This climax 

 is worked up to by pages of ex parte reasoning which 

 non-geological readers are not in a position to follow. 

 Considering that this evidence has not yet been brought 

 forward in any scientific publication, and that his repeated 

 promises to bring it before the Geological Society have 

 not yet been kept ; that Professors Hughes and Bonney 

 purposely went over part of the ground with him and 

 have publicly thrown grave doubts on the value of the 

 evidence ; that Professors Prestwich, Boyd Dawkins, Mr. 

 Evans and others do not admit its value, and that at the 

 Conference held last summer on the Antiquity of Man 

 the weight of evidence was rather against his interglacial 

 age in England, — it is little less than wantonness, whether 



