398 



KNOWLEDGE. 



October, 1913. 



In the future edition, which is sure to be needed before long, 

 it would be advisable to replace many of these blocks by 

 fresh drawings. The work deserves it. 



C. A. M. 



GEOLOGY. 



Volcanoes, their Structure and Significance.- — By Professor 



T. G. Bonney, Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S. Third Edition. 



379 pages. 16 plates. 21 illustrations. 8£-in. X6-in. 



(John Murray. Price 6/- net.) 



Since the second edition of this work much has been added 

 to our knowledge of vulcanicity by the great eruptions of the 

 Soufriere and Mont Pelfee, and by those in Guatemala and 

 Savaii. The first-named, however, was treated in an appendix 

 to the second edition, but in this book it assumes its proper 

 place in the text as, in at least one feature, a new type of 

 vulcanicity. The book is divided into six chapters, each 

 elaborating one aspect of volcanoes, their life history, 

 products, dissection, geological history in Britain, distribution, 

 and origin. The book is written in a picturesque and vigorous 

 style, well adapted to sustain the interest of the general 

 reader for whom it is intended. A disarming preface wards off 

 undue criticism. We may perhaps observe that while the 

 simplified petrographical nomenclature adopted may be very 

 comforting to both author and reader there is no such 

 simplicity in the rocks themselves ; and although the author 

 animadverts on the great number of new names, the majority 

 of them are absolutely necessary if any serious comparative 

 work in petrology is to be done. Professor Bonney also 

 favours the older view that there were two periods of eruption 

 in the famous old volcano of Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh ; but 

 the recent detailed mapping of the Scottish Geological Survey 

 is decisive in favour of Professor Judd's view that it is the 

 product of one continuous volcanic episode. The book con- 

 cludes with an admirable chapter on the various theories 

 advanced to account for volcanoes, in which we should have 

 liked to have seen some reference to Daly's recent fine work 

 on the mechanism of volcanic action. „ ... ~ 



g. w. r. 



Submerged Forests. — By Clement Reid, F.R.S. (Cambridge 

 Manuals). 129 pages. 5 figures. 6£-in. X 5-in. 



(The Cambridge University Press. Price 1/-) 



At many places around the English coast black peaty earth, 

 with tree-stumps and other plant-remains, is exposed between 

 tide-marks. Several layers of this material, the lowest 

 generally at a depth of sixty feet below sea-level, are often 

 found in dock excavations. These submerged forests, 

 although, as explained by the author, muddy subjects to 

 dabble in, are replete with scientific interest, and their 

 exposition has given rise to a most interesting little volume. 

 Submerged forests and their correlatives, raised beaches, give 

 the clues to the most recent vicissitudes in the relative levels 

 of land and sea. According to the author's estimate the 

 submerged forests indicate a recent subsidence of nearly 

 ninety feet of the land with respect to the sea. The newest 

 of these deposits belongs to the age of polished stone, and the 

 earliest also probably comes within the Neolithic period. In 

 Mr. Reid's opinion the earth-movements ceased about three 

 thousand five hundred years ago, and began about one 

 thousand five hundred years earlier. These estimates, as we 

 are carefully told, are not to be taken as exact, since they are 

 based on somewhat uncertain factors. 



Most of the book is occupied with the description of the 

 submerged forests seen on the English coasts. Amongst the 

 interesting subjects dealt with, the Dogger Bank, and the 

 question as to the mode and date of the severance of Britain 

 from the Continent, are the most likely to appeal to the 

 general reader. The author is to be congratulated on this 

 fine exposition of what, at first sight, appears to be an 

 unpromising and difficult subject. 



G. W. T. 



HISTORY. 



Ancient Greece. — By H. B. Cotterill, M.A. 498 pages. 



12 plates. 4 maps. 141 illustrations. 8^-in.X 5i-in. 



(George Harrap & Co. Price 7/6 net.) 



In an agreeable and compendious volume Mr. Cotterell has 

 furnished a popular history of Ancient Greece from the 

 earliest times about which anything is known down to the 

 life of Alexander the Great. He has interwoven with it 

 some account of Greek philosophy, literature, and art, and 

 added copious illustrations of sculpture, vases, ancient sites, 

 and famous men. The book will be a boon to the general 

 reader, who, with no knowledge of the Greek language and no 

 inclination for laborious study, would gladly acquaint himself 

 with the meaning and the place in history of all that is most 

 beautiful and expressive in art. The book, in fact, supplies a 

 want that must often have been felt by intelligent people with 

 small leisure. Mr. Cotterill sketches briefly the results of 

 recent discoveries throwing light on Aegean civilisation, and 

 shows how the early history of Greece was connected with 

 that of Crete and Egypt ; facts made additionally clear by a 

 useful chronological table, which provides an approximate 

 idea of their contemporary histories. In later times that most 

 tragic and graphic chapter in Greek history, the Sicilian 

 expedition, is illustrated by quotations from Thucydides ; the 

 march of the ten thousand from Xenophon. Mr. Cotterill 

 writes with a keen appreciation of what he describes and the 

 illustrations, to which allusion has already been made, have 

 been judiciously selected and well reproduced. Even coins 

 have received attention in this pleasant and useful book. 



E. S. G. 

 PHYSIOLOGY. 



Laws of Sexual Philosophy. — By J. L. Chundra. 208 

 pages. Frontispiece. 7i-in. X 5-in. 



(Calcutta : The Author. Price 4/- net.) 



Dr. Chundra is Professor of Medicine in the National 

 College of Calcutta, and his book is designed for students 

 of gynaecology and obstetrics. The volume contains much 

 that is of physiological and medical interest. Among other 

 points it discusses the theories which have been brought 

 forward and the experimental investigations, for instance of 

 Professor Schenck, with regard to the determination of sex. 

 The chapter entitled " The Laws of Genius," in which the 

 question of influence transmitted by parents to their children 

 is discussed, will hardly at the present time obtain serious 

 consideration. 



W. M. W. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



The Fate of Empires. Being an Inquiry into the Stability 



of Civilisation. — By Arthur John Hubbard, M.D. 



(Dunelm.) 220 pages. 3 figures. 8J-in. X5J-in. 



(Longmans, Green & Co. Price 6/6 net.) 



Dr. Hubbard has an interesting thesis to maintain. He 

 attempts to discover those forces which make for the growth 

 and decay of civilisation and of which history gives us only 

 the resultant. Of the latter he holds there are two, namely, 

 those due respectively from the social stress (i.e., the 

 competition of one's fellows) and the racial stress (i.e., the 

 trials and troubles of parenthood). Every stage in the history 

 of organic advance, he argues, will be found to be governed by 

 a new method or idea whereby life can be maintained on a 

 high scale. Each new method is superimposed upon the old, 

 which is utilised, not discarded, by the new. These methods 

 are as follows : — (1) Reflex Action ; (2) Instinct ; (3) Reason ; 

 (4) Religious motive. Instinct sacrifices the individual to the 

 race ; Reason, which results in Socialism, Dr. Hubbard 

 maintains, sacrifices the race to society, whose interests under 

 such a regime are identical with those of the individual. In 

 support of this he contends that Socialism appears simul- 

 taneously with a fall in the birth-rate. The method of 

 religious motive, he contends, alone reconciles the interests 

 of individual, society, and race by raising conduct from 

 geocentric to cosmocentric significance. 



