258 MAN AND NATURE. 



but we find no table of contents, nor any sufficient 

 indication of the scheme followed in the body of the 

 work. The want of these usual aids is a serious im- 

 pediment to the reader, and may have contributed in 

 part to that fragmentary character of the work to 

 which we have alluded. The heading of the chapters 

 is copious ; but these are broken again into numerous 

 short paragraphs, with a separate heading to each a 

 plan leading to frequent repetition and a want of con- 

 tinuity in the whole. 



We can hardly note it as a fault, but it is a pecu- 

 liarity in Mr. Marsh's work, that he has thrown fully 

 half of its substance into the form of notes. Many of 

 these notes are references to authorities, but many 

 others are reflections of the author himself, and often 

 of such value as to merit more diligent perusal than 

 the text which suggests them. Numerous illustrations, 

 as we have already stated, are drawn from the Ameri- 

 can continent, the largest exponent of the growing 

 dominion of man on the surface of the globe. Mr. 

 Marsh shows himself a keen commentator on the 

 habits and peculiarities of his countrymen, and very 

 candid in his avowal of what he thinks might be 

 amended. In one passage, with a note annexed to it 

 (p. 328), he speaks strongly of the instability of 

 American life, and closes his comments with something 

 very like an aspiration after change in the American 

 method of conveying land by inheritance: 



All human institutions, associate arrangements, and 

 modes of life have their characteristic imperfections. The 

 natural, perhaps the necessary defect of ours, is their insta- 



