SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



559 



out remedies in the storehouse of 

 natural knowledge. Nature duly in- 

 terrogated will supply the remedy. 

 For the world apart from man she 

 has established the beneficent law of 

 natural selection; for man also she 

 has established that law, but in the 

 heart of the human being she has 

 implanted, as an adjunct to it, the 

 law of justice. The full scope of 

 that law has never yet been ade- 

 quately understood by any human 

 society; and four fifths of the legis- 

 lative tinkering that is done by our 

 politicians springs from a simple ig- 

 noring of it. We wish most strong- 

 ly that every man of science, instead 

 of turning away from politics as 



something most alien to his studies, 

 would make a duty of asking him- 

 self this question : What light do my 

 studies throw upon the questions, or 

 some one or other of the questions, 

 that are now most debated in the 

 political world ? It may be that the 

 particular facts with which a given 

 man of science deals may have no 

 visible bearing on any question of 

 the day; but what about the scien- 

 tific methods he pursues have they 

 no bearing ? We are convinced that 

 light must come some day from the 

 direction of science. It is for the 

 men of science to see that they do 

 not fail in their duty in this most 

 important respect. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



IN these two handsome volumes* the distinguished Director General of 

 the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland traverses ground once 

 hot with subterranean fires but long since cooled, and traverses, too, a field 

 in science formerly heated by the fires of controversy which have burned 

 themselves out like the ancient volcanoes. Werner's "geognosts," or the 

 Neptunists, as they were dubbed, who in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century maintained the aqueous origin of basalt, were converted or silenced 

 in the early part of the nineteenth and have left no followers. There are 

 no more Plutonists, moreover, for all geologists are of that stripe. The 

 author has designed this work as a summary of what has now been ascer- 

 tained regarding the former volcanoes of the British Isles. u The subject," 

 he says, u has occupied much of my time and thought all through life. 

 Born among the crags that mark the sites of some of these volcanoes, 

 I was led in my boyhood to interest myself in their structure and his- 

 tory. The fascination which they then exercised has lasted till now, 

 impelling me to make myself acquainted with the volcanic records all 

 over our islands, and to travel into the volcanic regions of Europe and 

 western America for the purpose of gaining clearer conceptions of the 

 phenomena." The British Isles afford a large and varied body of evidence 

 regarding the progress of volcanic energy in former ages. The geological 

 record is remarkably complete in those islands, and has been very carefully 

 studied. The position of Britain, on the margin of a great ocean basin, is 

 one in which volcanic action is apt to be most vigorous and continuous. 

 Furthermore, denudation has made the extensive volcanic record of this 



* The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain. By Sir Archibald GeiMe, F. K. S., D. C. L., D. Sc. In 

 two volumes. New York : The Macmillan Co. Price,. $11.25. 



