August 2, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



315 



Our columns are not, as a rule, open to charitable appeals, 

 but vre make an exception in support of a movement to 

 purchase an annuity for Mr. J. B. Dancer, the well-known 

 optician. He was not onlj- one of the first to stimulate 

 miorascopy b}' the manufacture of excellent instruments at 

 a moderate price, but has b}' his skill and self-denying labour 

 effected important improvements in optical and electrical 

 apparatus; indeed, a long list of inventions stands to his 

 credit, but, unhappily, not a big balance at his bankers, 

 for in his old age he is a poor man, and after giving us eyes 

 to see with, is himself afflicted with almost total blindness. 

 The leading seienti>its of Manchester are on the committee 

 formed to aid him, and the manager of the Manchester and 

 Salford Bank in that city will thankfully receive subscrip- 

 tions. We strongly commend the case to the readers of 

 Knowledge. 



J\rbirUi6. 



The Cmisc of I/.M.S'. Bacchante, 1879-1882. Compiled 

 fi'om the Private Journals, Letters, and Note-books of Prince 

 Albert Victor and Prince George of Wales : with Additions 

 by John N. Dalton. Two vols. (Macmillan <fe Co.) — These 

 statel}' and sumptuous volumes embody the journals and 

 letters of " Queen Victoria's piccaninnies " (as the We.st 

 Indian negroes called them), during their three years' travel 

 by land and water, in which the only important exceptions 

 to places visited were India, America, and New Zealand. 

 Mr. Barlow — we beg pardon, we were thinking of " >Sand- 

 ford and Merton " — Mr. Dalton, under whose charge the 

 princes were placed, has made considerable additions to 

 the text, which are indicated by brackets, and but for 

 these it would be extremely ditiicult to distinguish his 

 work from that of his royal pupils, which at least pre- 

 sumably says something for their literary skill. The 

 sketches of life on board, with its routine and diversions, 

 and of impressions of visits on land under the guidance 

 of experts and the fierce light that beats on princes, 

 have a good deal of freshness about them, and are indeed 

 much above the average of letters sent home by boys to 

 their parents; while the opinions expressed upon Imperial 

 and Colonial subjects give evidence of observation and 

 intelligence which augurs well for the future of young men 

 destined to high functions of State. The section on China, 

 to which Mr. Dalton has added explanatory notes on Con- 

 fucius and his system, should be read in conjunction with 

 ]\Iiss Crordon Cumming's book for its sujiplemental descrip- 

 tion of the system of competitive examination ; while in that 

 on Japan, where the princes were the guests of tlie Mikado, 

 we get glimjises into court life. But it is impossible to 

 follow the travellers in detail through 1,500 closely-printed 

 pages, and it must suffice to say that they have, under their 

 tutor's editorial care, given a brightly-written and sensible 

 account of the many lands and peoples visited. Instead of 

 unwieldy maps we have inset charts of the course from 

 port to port, which it was the duty of the princes as mid- 

 shipmen to prepare, and the routes are thus made easier to 

 trace. But it is discreditable that a book so full of multi- 

 tudinous matter should be issued without an index. 



The Xaluralist's Diary : a Day-book of Meteorolajy, 

 Phenology, and Rural Bioloyy. Arranged and Edited by 

 Charles Egberts, F.R.C.S., etc. (London : Swan Sonnen- 

 schein, Le Bas & Lowrey.) — Mr. Roberts, in the novel form 

 of work before us, has rendered a real service to all who 

 may wish to derive that perennial pleasure inseparable from 

 the intelligent observation of rural phenomena. Hundreds 



of valuable observations are lost through the absence of any 

 well-defined system of making them, and it is to set forth a 

 definite plan for the observer that this very useful Diary 

 has been compiled. It gives the mean temperature, baro- 

 meter, rainfall, wind, &c., at a selected station, for com- 

 parison with those observed in the reader's own locality ; 

 furnishes an exhaustive list of British plants and trees, 

 with a practically complete fauna ; directs the observer 

 what to look for and when to look for it ; and, in fact, 

 supplies all the information necessary to render the various 

 classes of observation of which it treats of real scientific 

 value. Any one who will conscientiously fill in the spaces 

 in this volume devoted to local records, will find by the 

 year's end that he has accumulated a mass of information 

 of real and permanent importance and weight. There used 

 to be a series of works published tinder such titles as 

 " Every Man his own Butler," ttc. Mr. lloberts's volume 

 may be succinctly described as " Every Man his own White 

 of Selborne." 



The Mystic Voices of Heaven; or, 'The Supernatund 

 revealed in the Natural Scienci of the Heavens. By An 

 OxFORP Graduate. (London: Elliot Stock. 188G.) — 

 What Professor Drummond attempted to do, in a more or 

 less scientific spirit, in his " Natural Law in the Spiritual 

 AVorld," the author of the volume of sermons before us 

 essays to accomplish in what, for want of a better word, we 

 may term a rhapsodical one. The " Oxford Graduate " has 

 apjjarently devoured books on popular astronomy of all 

 shades of authority and value, and has attempted to correlate 

 the statements, well or ill founded, which they contain with 

 the mystical maundcrings of patristic literature. The result 

 is a series of discourses in which the enunciation of scientific 

 facts alternates oddly with inflated periods and turgid 

 rhetoric. The entire volume may be regarded as a striking 

 example of misdirected ingenuity. It is a comparatively 

 trivial fault in it that its author quotes mere comjiilers like 

 Guillemin and Lockyer as of equal weight and authority 

 with such men as Bali, Herschel, Newcomb, and Beckett. 

 Malgre this, the student might derive a not inconsiderable 

 amount of astronomical knowledge from our author's pages, 

 into which facts have been emptied wholesale. With regard 

 to the inferences from those facts, however, perhaps the less 

 said the better. It may sufiice to remind those disposed to 

 attach any weight to the utterances of " the Fathers " that 

 one of the very earliest of them, Clemens Romanus, derived 

 an argument for the Resurrection from the veracious history 

 of the Phoenix 1 



Wanderings in China. By C. F. Gordon Gumming. 

 ( Wm. Blackwood & Sons.) — We are not surprised to see this 

 book in a second edition. No work of such abiding value 

 and interest about the Celestials has appeared since Arch- 

 deacon Gray's " China," and to Miss Gumming must be 

 awarded the palm for vivacity and picturesqueness of style. 

 Faithful as a photograph, yet without its hardness, since the 

 pages are aglow with the scenes described, is the picture 

 which Miss Gumming presents of this strange land and 

 people, in all the squalor and the splendour, the dignity and 

 dirt, the fimtastic and the frightful, which characterise life 

 alike in the cities and the rice-swamps. Miss Gumming has 

 brought together materials in plenty for the archf-eologist, 

 the sociologist, and the folk-lorist ; but perhaps the most 

 striking features of these volumes are the insight into 

 the domestic life of the " lily-footed " upper classes, to 

 which Miss Gumming had the privilege of entree, and the 

 accounts of the State-recognised and universal ancestor- 

 worship, with its resulting terrible burden of custom and 

 expense which the laws of the land and the ingenuity of the 

 priests impose, and with the arrest of material and moral 



