April 1, 1887.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



141 



possessor of a magic tube, peeps into which reveal the 

 future, describes a vision of telegraphs and railways to the 

 Caliph, who, enraged at his monstrous inventions, orders 

 him to immediate execution. 



She. By H. Rider Haggard. (Longmans.)—" She " 

 already numbers its readers by thousands ; it has provoked 

 a parody in which the deft hand that wrote " Much Darker 

 Days " is traceable, and, moreover, an explanation from Mr. 

 Rider Haggard of the esoteric teaching of the wonderful 

 story. We confess that we do not greatly care to know that 

 the lessons intended to be conveyed in the aireer of Ayesha 

 are the deathlessness of deep love and " the probable effects 

 of immortality working upon the known and ascertained 

 substance of the mortal," Ayesha's insolent menace against 

 Omnipotence, as her hardness and cynicism grow with the 

 creeping centuries, being punished by the terrible fate 

 described in the story. The fertility of invention charac- 

 terising " She ' delights and enthralls u.s, and, moral or no 

 moral therein, we read it with interest that deepens as the 

 tale advances to the awful sequel . But Job, who is intended 

 as a comic set-oif against the graver characters, is an irritant, 

 and the story would gain by his removal. 



Books and Bookmen. By Andrew Lang. (Longmans.) — 

 Books about books have a perennial charm, and bibliophiles 

 may without hesitation accord Mr. Lang's new volume 

 brevet rank as a worthy comrade with his former book on 

 " The Library," and with Dr. Hill Burton's classic " Book- 

 Hunter." The book collector is on a lower plane than the 

 lover of litei-ature, to whom the form is nothing, the spirit 

 everything. But although the accident and not the essence, 

 the clothing and not the soul, make the book dear to the 

 collector, his functions are more useful than his intentions, 

 since his care for the lesser secures the preservation of the 

 greater. Mr. Lang, we need scarcely say, does not value 

 books for their externals alone, and in the limits which he 

 has set himself gossips in chatty, learned fashion, the learning 

 being dropped in in his happy allusive way, about the true 

 and spurious in the famed Elzeviis; about the art of the 

 old bindei-s, notably the French ; about title-pages, quaint 

 specimens of which are given in facsimile : and then wanders 

 oif to gossip on parish registers and literary forgeries. To 

 the volume is added a reprint on " Japanese Bogie Books," 

 from tlie .Magazine of Art, with gruesome illustrations of a 

 storm-fiend and a well-and-water bogie, limp and washed 

 out, with drooping and dripping arms, perchance a washer 

 of dead men's linen in the moonlit pools and rivers. Mr. 

 Lang tells us he has spared our nerves in not venturing to 

 copy yet more awful specimens of Oriental spectres. 



The Arithmetic of Electrical 3lerisurements. ByW. R. P. 

 HoBBS. (London : Thos. Murby.) — This little book will be 

 found handy by everyone engaged in the economic applica- 

 tion of electricity. It contains a large number of numerical 

 examples of the strength of current, and of resistance pro- 

 duced by arrangements described in the text. In the outset 

 an illustrative example or two are worked out at length, 

 and then a series of questions are set for exerciss. 



Ayi Elementar}! Text-book of British Fungi. By Wit. 

 Delisle Hay, F.R.G.S. (London : Swan Sonnenschein, 

 Lowrey, & Co. 1887.) — Here is another botanical work, 

 addressing even a larger pulilic than that of Professor 

 Strasburger. For the chief end proposed to himself by 

 Mr. Hay is the description of fungi in their economic aspect 

 — a subject of great and growing interest to all who wish to 

 find some chejip nitrogenous substitute for the butcher's 

 meat which has become so needlessly costly ; to say nothing 

 of the gourmet, to whom many an unknown and unsus- 

 pected form of " toadstool " will come as a delicious esculent. 

 Among the most valuable chapters in the book may be 



mentioned the one ou the discrimination of edible fungi ; 

 that on the chemistrj' and toxicology of fungi ; while in the 

 Appendix no less than 133 recipss for cooking mushrooms 

 and other fungi are given. The very numerous engravings 

 are beautifully executed. If the circulation of this volume 

 is commensurate with its popular interest, it should surely 

 be very considerable. 



Celestial Motions : A Handy Book oj Astronomy. By 

 Wm. Thynne Lynx, B.A., F.R.A.S. Fifth edition. (London : 

 E. Stanford. 1887.) — We need only note here that in this 

 fifth edition of Mr. Lynn's excellent little book (of which 

 we have on previous occasions spoken in terms of praise) 

 the information is brought down to the very latest date, 

 and that a chapter has been added on the refraction, 

 propagation, and aberration of light. 



God and His Book. By Sal.idix. (London : W. Stewart 

 k Co.) — By unseemly flippancy, and irrelevant levity, 

 " Saladin " seriously weakens a case which is, to a con- 

 siderable extent, irrefutable. Many of his readers who 

 will be unable to find any valid reply to his objections, 

 will be repelled by the tone in which they are advanced, 

 and he will thus excite hostility in some whom a different 

 style of argument might have converted into allies. Notably 

 will he rai.se antagonism in cultured students of his book, to 

 whom his "' chaff" (we can find no more appropriate word than 

 this slang one for it) will be revolting. There can be no doubt 

 that the calm, pitiless, unimpassioned mai-shalling of facts in 

 " Supernatural Religion " has done more to shake the founda- 

 tions of the faith (or credulity) of thousands who, prior to its 

 perusal, were models of orthodoxy, than all the irreverent 

 je.sts of "Colonel" IngersoU and his school put together. 

 We are the more disposed to regret the general style of the 

 volume before us when we find — as in one or two of the 

 chapters towards the end of the book — to what a height of 

 pathos and real eloquence its author can rise when he 

 chooses. 



The Young Carthaginian; or, A Struggle for Empire. 

 By G. A. Hextv. (London : Blackie k Son. 1887.)— It 

 is scarcely an exaggeration to say that this capital story of 

 Mr. Henty's is the very model of what a boy's book ought 

 to be. There is not a single dull page out of all its 384, 

 for it is full of incident from beginning to end. We will 

 not spoil the enjoyment of any of the thousands of lads who, 

 we hope and believe, will soon have this volume in their 

 hands, by anything like a 2jrecis of the stirring adventures 

 of the young Carthaginian nobleman Malchus, who is the 

 hero of the tale. SufEce it to say that he nndei-goes a sei-ies 

 of most exciting ones, which, however, are strictly sequent, 

 and arise perfectly naturally out of one another. Mr. flenty 

 has obviously taken great pains to be archa^ologically cor- 

 rect in all his details, with the result that we seem to see 

 his characters as living men and women before us, and to be 

 face to fiice with the dead-and-gone form of civilisation of 

 2,000 years ago. One thing we may safely predict in con- 

 nection with the volume before us, and that is that everj-one 

 who reads it will assuredly go back to his " Cornelius 

 Xepos," or his " Livy," with a ze.st for information as to 

 the lives of Hannibal, Hamilcar, and their compeers, to 

 which, in connection with his former mere " grind," with 

 the Latin Text and his Dictionary, he was a total stranger. 

 We have one very trivial fault to find with the book. It is 

 this, that the illustrations are scarcely worthy of the text. 

 The only one that seems to us to exhibit much artistic feel- 

 ing is that facing p. 210. 



Studies in Microscopical Science. Edited by Arthur C. 

 Cole. (Birmingham : Hammond ife Co.). — There is no 

 falling off in the interest and value of this serial, which we 

 heartily commend to young biologists. We have also to 



