388 



NATURE 



{Feb. 23, I 



jumble? The large-type sections that connect these 

 masses of confused notes are still more perplexing. 

 Here, also, the commonplace-book predominates, but the 

 extracts are worked up into some semblance of a con- 

 tinuous exposition. It is very seldom, however, that one 

 can read a page on end without losing the thread. The 

 reason soon becomes obvious. What is offered as a 

 book is really nothing more than a transcript of rough 

 jottings, in which Dr. Bastian had from time to time 

 recorded his ideas in a form just sufficient to preserve a 

 record for his own use. The sentences are often not 

 even grammatical, and in brief the volume is only the 

 roughest of rough note-books printed without revision. 

 In spite, therefore, of the enormous labour and learning 

 which it attests, the whole must be pronounced a failure, 

 for the elementary reason that it is not a book. We 

 trust that the publication may be useful to the author in 

 helping him to get his superabundant material better 

 under control, and so to produce hereafter something 

 that is a book and can be read. 



The ethnological picture-book is designed for young 

 people, and its illustrations of cosmogonic and cosmo- 

 graphic ideas, of various conceptions of the future life 

 and so forth, are well calculated to excite their curiosity 

 and stimulate their interest in such things. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Experimental Chemistry for Junior Students. By J. 



Emerson Reynolds, M.D., F.R.S. Part IV. Organic 



Chemistry. (London : Longmans, Green, and Co., 



1887.) 

 This volume on organic completes the author's course of 

 experimental chemistry. Whatever may be the opinions 

 on the three previous volumes, there is no doubt this is 

 the most rational attempt to treat organic chemistry 

 practically — as a thing for students actually to do— that 

 has as yet appeared. There is scarcely an experiment 

 in the book that a student will be unable to do from the 

 description given, and the order in which they are taken 

 and general arrangement is the natural order of synthesis, 

 proceeding from the less complex and easy to the most 

 complex and least known. 



The author begins with destructive distillation, and the 

 production of alcohols, their salts, &c. The fourth chapter 

 deals with metallic compounds or organo-metallic bodies. 

 In the description of the manufacture of zinc ethide the 

 method of making from zinc, C2H5I, and iodine might 

 have been given, as the action is much quicker than with 

 the Cu — Zn couple and the yield greater. The current of 

 CO2 can also be dispensed with advantageously. Two 

 experiments here we must take exception to as being rather 

 dangerous for beginners — sealing up sodium with zinc 

 ethide, and in Experiment 691 making mercuric ethide 

 as a sort of starting-point material. The author cautions 

 against inhaling the vapour of this substance, as it is 

 " supposed to be poisonous." We thought it was quite 

 settled that it is about the most dangerous substance one 

 has to deal with ; and we certainly do not agree with the 

 author that the method of employing mercuric ethide for 

 making zinc ethide is the easiest of all methods for making 

 the last-named substance. 



In the remainder of the little book there is nothing 

 either in arrangement or process to which objection can 

 be taken, and undoubtedly it should be most useful to 

 students attending a course of organic lectures. As a rule 

 English students stop off with organic before they have 

 really made its acquaintance ; very few indeed continue 

 its study long enough for it to be of any use to them. 



Most of the works in England where " organic 

 chemistry" is the rule are obliged to obtain the services 

 of German chemists ; the English student's acquaintance 

 with the subject generally stopping at the knowledge that 

 there are such things as hydrocarbons, or " hydrocarbides," 

 as the author of this book calls them. 



Perhaps when such practical instruction is given in our 

 schools as the course outlined by this book, we may begin 

 to produce students who can go into "a works" and be 

 trusted not only to follow a process but to originate new 

 ones. W. R. H. 



The Farmer's Friends and Foes. By Theodore Wood, 



F.E.S. (London : Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrej', and 



Co., 1888.) 

 This is a well-meant and well-put-together little volume, 

 giving an account of the life-history of most of the 

 animals which, for good or for evil, come across the path 

 of the British agriculturist. Throughout, the attempt is 

 made to prove that, when it is necessary for the saving of 

 a crop to destroy any animal, it is far better to trust to 

 Nature, as being more competent, than to man ; but then 

 this seems to beg the whole question, as it presumes that 

 man has not already very much interfered with Nature's 

 regulations. 



The volume is, in part, the result of personal investiga- 

 tion, but the author quotes freely from all our best-known 

 writers on the subjects of which he treats. 



The figures are good. A table of contents would have 

 added to the usefulness of the work, especially as the 

 index is not very detailed. The volume may be safely 

 placed in the hands of all interested in the subject. 



The Story of Creation. By Edward Clodd. (London : 



Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888.) 

 The author of this book does not pretend to make his 

 readers acquainted with new facts and ideas. His object 

 is to present a popular exposition of the theory of evolu- 

 tion, using the word evolution in its widest sense. The 

 work is divided into two parts — one descriptive, the other 

 explanatory. In the descriptive part he begins with a 

 chapter on matter and power. He then considers the 

 distribution of matter in space, and gives a general 

 account of the sun and the planets, of the past life-history 

 of the earth, and of present life-forms. In the explana- 

 tory part he discusses the questions relating to inorganic 

 evolution and to the. origin of life and life-forms, and 

 sets forth in logical order the arguments which are held 

 to establish the truth of Darwin's theory of the origin and 

 development of species. A final chapter is devoted to 

 social evolution, including the evolution of mind, society, 

 language, art and science, morals, and theology. The book 

 is vigorously written, and well illustrated ; and readers 

 who have had no special scientific training will find that 

 it enables them to understand and appreciate some of 

 the greatest and most fruitful generalizations of modern 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



\The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he under- 

 take to return, or to correspond with the writers of, 

 rejected manuscripts. No notice is taken of anonymous 

 communications. 



\The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep theit 

 letters as short as possible. The pressure on his space 

 is so great that it is impossible otherwise to insure the 

 appearance even of communications containing interesting 

 and novel facts. '\ 



Botanists and the Micromillimetre. 

 I NOTICE that in a review of a " Manual of British Disco- 

 mycetes " which appeared in Nature on February 9 (p. 340), 

 and apparently also in that work itself, the word micromilli- 

 metre is used as equivalent to the thousandth of a millimetre. 



