March 28, 1889] 



NATURE 



509 



founded on false data, we trust it could never become a 

 temptation to our present author. 



But besides the difficulty of writing on electrical mea- 

 surement without mathematics, there is, in our opinion, 

 an attempt to catalogue and describe far too great a num- 

 ber of instruments and methods. In making this criti- 

 cism, we cannot support it by mentioning names ; but 

 the author knows well, and everyone else knows, that 

 many of the instruments and methods to which space is 

 devoted are absolutely worthless ; and it would be in- 

 finitely better to omit them, and thus both avoid con- 

 fusion and save space, which might well be given to those 

 that are of importance. 



Altogether, the book requires re-writing, by which it could 

 undoubtedly be made of very considerable value. The 

 style is not good. With a sort of self-consciousness, Mr. 

 Swinburne calls himself " the writer " throughout. Some 

 of the criticisms— for example, that on the " B. A. Com- 

 mittee" (p. 22), and a remark on one of our most highly- 

 valued scientific men (p. no) — are altogether out of taste, 

 coming from the pen of one who has his reputation still 

 to win. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Galileo and his Judges. By F. R. Wegg-Prosser. (London : 



Chapman and Hall, 1889.) 

 This work is a temperate discussion of the vexed question 

 of the treatment of Galileo by the Pope and the Congrega- 

 tion of the Inquisition. The facts are not new ; Mr. 

 Prosser puts himself unreservedly in the hands of M. 

 Henri de I'Epinois, whose article in La Revue des Ques- 

 tions Historiques is well known, and who has, Mr. Prosser 

 says, gone to the trouble of consulting at first hand all the 

 documents that could be found at the Vatican bearing on 

 the subject. Mr. Prosser, in drawing his conclusions' 

 from the facts, adopts a kind of middle ground. He is a 

 Catholic, and though he is too sensible a man to follow 

 many of the Catholic writers in their conclusions, yet he 

 seems to be shocked at the standpoint taken by a few of 

 the Catholic writers who have condemned the treatment 

 of Galileo. Thus he occupies a position between keen 

 controversialists like the late Dr. Ward, on the one hand, 

 who hold that not only did the Congregations act within 

 their rights and their legitimate sphere, but that, looked 

 at from the point of view of the early part of the seven- 

 teenth century, they acted wisely and prudently, and 

 Catholic writers like Dr. Mivart, on the other hand, who 

 assert (these are Mr. Prosser's words) " that the Church 

 has no authority to interfere in matters relating to physical 

 science, and that the issue in the Galileo case has proved 

 the fallacy of her attempting to do so ; that without en- 

 tering into the discussion of what ought or what ought 

 not to have been done in former times, we of the present 

 generation have evidence sufficient to show us that 

 scientific investigations should by right be free from the 

 control of ecclesiastical authority." The first step taken 

 by the Church against Galileo was in 161 6, in censuring 

 him for his teaching, and warning him of the consequences 

 if he continued to teach the doctrines, first, that the sun 

 was the centre of the universe, and therefore locally im- 

 movable ; second, that the earth was not the centre of 

 the world, and moved round itself diurnally. The first 

 doctrine was declared by the Qualifiers — that is, the com- 

 mittee appointed from the Congregation of the Inquisi- 

 tion — to be foolish and absurd from a philosophical point 

 of view, and heretical since it contradicted the meaning 

 which had been given to certain passages of Scripture by 

 the Church. Galileo promised to obey the warning, " /// 



supra dictam opinionem . . . omnino relinqual, nee earn 

 de cetero quovis modo doceat teneat aut defendat verba aut 

 icripiis." Mr. Prosser enters into a very long argument 

 to show that this decree of 1616, though founded on 

 reasons of doctrine, was merely disciplinary, and not 

 given on a matter dejide, in which he is now and then 

 rather casuistical. Galileo after this remained in peace 

 till he was summoned to Rome to answer for the printing 

 and publishing of his " Dialogue " in 1632. The heads of 

 accusation are set out at length in the present work, but 

 substantially they come to this, that he had disobeyed the 

 order of 16 16, and had continued to teach the same doc- 

 trines as those for whigh he was then reprimanded. It is 

 impossible not to see that in summoning him to Rome 

 the Pope was to some extent actuated by feelings of pique, 

 for the fool of the " Dialogue," Simplicio, undoubtedly 

 represents His Holiness. Mr. Prosser goes on to show 

 that, having regard to the state of knowledge at the time, 

 the Inquisition could have done nothing else but convict 

 Galileo. The defence of the latter was threefold. In the 

 first place, he said that Bellarmine had informed him 

 that he might hold the Copernican doctrine as an hypo- 

 thesis. This was undoubtedly the case ; but it appears 

 as something more than an hypothesis in the " Dialogue." 

 Galileo answers to this that he had merely put the theory 

 in the mouth of a speaker whose teachings were combated 

 by the other speakers. Secondly, he maintained that he 

 had not contravened the order given to him not to teach 

 or expound that abominable doctrine in any way. This 

 is hardly correct, as the " Dialogue" will show. Thirdly, he 

 declared that he did not remember having been forbidden 

 to teach it. But he could hardly have forgotten the terms 

 of the order of 1616, which have been quoted above, 

 nor the rebuke given him by Bellarmine by order of the 

 Pope. 



Observations on the Embryology 0/ Insects and Arachnids. 



By Adam Todd Bruce, B.A. of Princeton College, 



Ph.D. of Johns Hopkins University. A Memorial 



Volume. (1887.) 

 The subject-matter of this volume formed the thesis sub- 

 mitted by the author when he presented himself for the 

 degree of Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University. After 

 his lamented death, in 1887, the thesis was reprinted, 

 exactly as he wrote it, as a memorial volume. He had 

 made many additions to the work which is here recorded, 

 but as the notes were unaccompanied by drawings it was 

 impossible to make use of them. An account of the life 

 and scientific work of the author is written by Prof. W. K. 

 Brooks. The early death of Dr. Bruce, at the age 

 of twenty-seven, prevented any very extensive amount of 

 scientific research. It will, however, be clear to any 

 reader of the careful and excellent work contained in this 

 paper, that American biological science has lost an 

 investigator of the very highest promise. Dr. Bruce had 

 also very carefully studied, in conjunction with Prof. 

 Brooks, the early stages of the development of Limulus, 

 and it is much to be hoped that these results may be 

 published at no distant date. A thorough study of the 

 earliest stages of this most interesting form by so careful 

 an embryologist would be extremely valuable. Prof. 

 Brooks informs us that the work included " the segmenta- 

 tion of the tgg, the formation of the blastoderm and of 

 the germ-layers, and the anatomy of the young larva . . . 

 illustrated by nearly a hundred drawings." I mention 

 this in the hope that some means of publication may be 

 found in this country, if the claims upon the space of the 

 American Journal 0/ Morphology are too great to admit 

 of the appearance of a paper on so important a subject 

 in what appears to be its appropriate position. 



The volume contains an attempt to settle the most 

 difficult questions concerning the earlier stages of the 

 development of spiders, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and 

 Orthoptera, while less complete observations were made 



