68 



♦ KNO^A^LKDGE ♦ 



[January 2, 1888. 



second ring, give the paper a single twist (fig. 2), and before 

 completing the third ring give the strip two twists. These 

 twists in the completed rings (1 nnd 2) will be so much the 

 less perceptible in proportion as their diameter is greater. 



If we take a pair of scissors and cut through the circum- 

 ference of ring No. 1 in the direction shown by the dotted 

 lines, we shall obtain two rings, as shown in No. 1'. Pro- 

 ceeding in the same way with ring No. 2, we shall obtain a 

 single elongated ring, as shown in No. 2', and with No. 3, 

 two rings which are connected like the links of a chain, as 

 shown in No. 3'. 



Factors in Life. By H. G. Seeley, F.R.S. (Society for 

 Promoting Christian Knowledge.) — This work consists of 

 three lectures upon the important subjects of health, food, 

 and education. We have no hesitation in sieving that it 

 is a book that will do good wherever it is read. The 

 thoughtful will find matter for more thought, and those 

 who do not habitually think on these essential matters may, 

 and probably will, find facts so strikingly placed before 

 them as to impress them to their advantage. The language 

 is rather above our artisans, but we should like to see it 

 in their hands. It would make an excellent reader, for 

 instance, in the higher classes in Board schools, or a capital 

 little volume for cheap school prizes. 



Jfamtal of Zoolo<pj. By H. Alleyne Nicholsox. (Wm. 

 Blackwood ct Sons.) — This book carries its own credentials 

 in the imprint " seventh edition " on its title-page. But it 

 is an edition which, keeping in step with the quick march 

 of biological science, has been re-cast and re-written, so that 

 it claims to be regarded as essentially a new work, and in 

 comparing it with its immediate predecessors we find this 

 claim warranted. The author's leanings to some funda- 

 mental ditference between the inorganic and the organic are 

 still apparent; but his treatmentof the question is eminently 

 fair, and his observations on the vulnerable part of the 

 theory of natural selection have a force which Darwin him- 

 self never underrated, and which gives Professor Nicholson 

 occasion to refer to Mr. Piomanes's moribund theory of 

 physiological selection. The expose oi the Duke of Argyll's 

 Ijaseless charge of stijip.-essio vei'i against biologists in the 

 matter of Mr. Murray's revision of Darwin's theory of the 

 formation of coral reefs, which Professor Huxley gives in 

 the November numbi-r of the yineteftdh Cextvri/, has 

 further illustration in Professor Nicholson's reference. We 

 observe that, in accordance with the best authorities, the 

 author removes the sponges from the lowest sub-kingdom 

 and promotes them to a sub-kingdom between the Protozoa 

 and Cielenterata, called the Porifera. We hope that the 

 sponges duly appreciate this recognition of their nearer 

 kinship with man. Altogether, the volume is to be 

 accorded high r.nik as a complete and accurate, yet, having 

 regard to its subject, not unwield}', text-book. It is pro- 

 fusely illustrated with excellent woodcuts. 



Sketch of Geological IHstory. By Edward Hull, F.R S. 

 (C. W. Deacon it Co.) — The Director-General of the 

 Geological Survey of Ireland follows illustrious examples in 

 prepaiing this abstract of a science which he has at his 

 fingers' ends. But, except as rounding ofl' the series of 

 historical manuals which the same publishers have issued, 

 we fail to see the general object of the book. It is an 

 attempt to compress a vast subject into an absurdly small 

 space, with the result that the book reads like an enlarged 

 index, which may be found useful to readers intending to 

 pursue the subject farther. Dr. Hull has certainly no 



breath of genius in his style, whereby these dry bones might 

 live, while, as in no wise strengthening his authority, he 

 inclines to some modified theory of special creations, which 

 may partly account for his reference to the appearance of 

 marsupials as " born out of due time." The truer explana- 

 tion seems to be that these highly organised forms existed 

 at far more remote epochs than their earliest-known remains 

 indicate. 



The Tshi-speakitir/ Peoples of the Gold Coast. By Major 

 A. B. Ellis. (Chapman <fe Hall.) — The whole of the forest 

 tract lying between the Assini and Yolta rivers on the Gold 

 Coast is inhabited by negro tribes speaking dialects of one 

 language, called the Tshi (pronounced Tchwi). The enfeebling 

 climate is largely responsible for their generally low condi- 

 tion, sufficing evidence of its deadening effect on both mind 

 and body being cited by Major Ellis in the relapse of the 

 inhabitants of Liberia, who are the descendants of freed 

 American negroes, into barbarism. But although the tribes 

 whose btliefs and customs are vividly and skilfully described 

 have, except where in contact with the European settlers on 

 the coast, and then only slightly, not been aflected by foreign 

 intercourse, their social organisations show them to be far 

 above the savage level. It is in their customs, made tyran- 

 nically binding by connections with duties to the several 

 orders of gods — tribal, local, family, and individual or 

 tutelar)- — and in their crude idais of death as unnatural, 

 of the reality of dreams, of the ascription of life to every 

 moving thing, and so forth, that the proofs of their unpro- 

 gressiveness are found, and it is the details concerning these 

 which make Major Ellis's book one of great value to the 

 anthropologist, while it abounds in interesting matter for 

 the non-specialist. Although the author explains totemism 

 on Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory that an ancestor was once 

 called by the name of an animal or plant, and that in the 

 course of time his descendants, ignorant of the origin of a 

 name, came to believe that he was descended from one or 

 the other, and therefore abstained fiom them as food ; and 

 although he appears to accept ]\Ir. Max Miiller's explana- 

 tions of fetichism as the corruption of a primitive faculty 

 whereby man apprehends God, we find his information 

 valuable and trustworthy, because he sees the difiiculty of 

 getting at facts free from the distorting media, fond delu- 

 sions, and preconceptions of many travellers. It is a great 

 gain to have such a hook from so acute and dispassionate an 

 observer as M.ijor Ellis, and we hope that the reception 

 which will be accorded to it may stimulate him to continue 

 this important work of adding to our stock of knowledge 

 concerning the ideas and practices of races whose extinction 

 is only a question of time. 



Aniiiuils from the Life. By Heinrich Leutemann. 

 Edited by Arabella B. Buckley. (Edward Stanford.)— 

 We must accord this charming and delightful book the first 

 place .among worthy gifts for our young folk this season. 

 Miss Buckley has adapted the German origin.al — -the dis- 

 tinctive and careful feature of which is in its actual studies 

 from the life — to the requirements of English children, for 

 whom she describes, in her own accurate and e.asy st3de, the 

 animals grouped on each plate. They are given in descend- 

 ing scale, from man to sponge, and dull must the child be 

 in whom these beautifully-coloured pictures do not awaken 

 interest in all that lives. 



From a Garret. By May Kendall. (Longmans.) — "That 

 Very Mab " gave ample proof of Miss Kendall's cultivated 

 intellectual gifts, and " that very " clever book led us to 

 expect some le-'s fugitive work from her brilliant, and often 

 caustic, pen than the present collection of studies. The 

 device of a prologue, which ]iurports to edit somebody else's 

 manuscript, is a trifle stale, and neither awakens nor 

 enhances interest in charactere that play a more or less real 



