4IO 



XATURE 



[August 29, 1895 



a sportsman and a naturalist. One chapter is devoted to 

 this, but we doubt if it does full credit to Baker's work in 

 this field. His valuable contributions to natural history 

 are barely referred to ; his important ser\'ices to gunnery 

 and his improvements in cartridges are not mentioned. We 

 should have been glad to have seen more space devoted 

 to this, at the cost of condensation of the political writings, 

 some of which are hardly likely to add to his reputation. 

 For when we remember the conditions under which he 

 shot, the clumsy old muzzle-lo.iders and the badly-mixed 

 powders he used, and the accuracy and fulness of his 

 obser\ations upon the habits of animals, we cannot but 

 reckon Baker as the greatest of English sportsmen. 



WTiile Baker's memoir gives an account of the political 

 conditions of the Soudan from i860 onward. Prof Keane's 

 admirable summary of the present knowledge of North 

 African geography completes the sketch in other depart- 

 ments. He divides North .Africa into six divisions, viz. 

 the .Atlas (including Morocco, .Algiers and Tunis), the 

 Sahara, the Soudan and the Niger Basin, Egypt and 

 Nubia, and Italian North-East Africa (including Abyssinia 

 and Somaliland). Each of these districts is described 

 separately, an account being given of its general physical 

 geography, of its historj', as far as this is known, of its 

 ethnography, and natural history. The ethnographical 

 sketches are especially well done, while the political his- 

 tories are the most detailed. The natural history is the 

 least satisfactory" part of the book. The geology is 

 mostly quoted second-hand, or is taken only from geo- 

 graphical instead of from geological papers. Some of 

 the botanical records are certainly quite untrustworthy, as 

 when on p. 533 Casuarina is reported on the banks of 

 the Webi Shebeyli, whereas it occurs only on the ends of 

 the promontories on the eastern coasts. The nine maps 

 are admirably clear, while full of information. The volume 

 is in ever)' way a great improvement on the preceding 

 editions. The immense increase in the material to be 

 summarised, has made the task a difficult one. This 

 enormous growth of knowledge applies, however, to five 

 out of the six districts described. It is only in one that 

 progress has been stopped, and of which the new edition 

 has nothing fresh to report, except paper delimi- 

 tations in Europe and reaction in .Africa. .All Junker's 

 collections, the greatest ever made in the eiiuatorial 

 provinces of Egypt, were lost by the closing of the 

 .Soudan. It is to be hoped, however, that European 

 officials will not much longer prohibit our representatives 

 in the field from taking action, and again opening to 

 progress the lands where Gordon's death and Baker's 

 life-work added their names to the roll of our national 

 heroes. I. W. ('■. 



BIO-OPTIMISM. 

 The Evergreen. A Norlhern Seasonal. Published in 

 the I.awnmarkct of Edinburgh by Patrick ("leddes and 

 Colleagues. (London : Fisher Unwin, 1895.) 



IT is not often that a reviewer is called upon to write 

 art criticism in the columns of N.murk. But the 

 circumstances of the " Evergreen " are peculiar ; it is pub- 

 li^li' '1 ^^ .:'' tific sanction as the expression of 



1 • ■•■■m:u^ enceof Art, and it is impossible 



to avoid gLinciiig .11 its ii'sthetic merits. It is a semi- 

 NO. 134S, vnr,. 52] 



annual periodical emanating from the biological school 

 of St. .Andrews University. Mr. J. Arthur Thomson 

 assists with the proem and the concluding article \" The 

 Scots Renascence "), and other significant work in the 

 volume is from the pen of Prof. Patrick Geddes. It 

 may be assumed that a large section of the public will 

 accept this volume as being representative of the younger 

 generation of biological workers, and as indicating the 

 a'sthetic tendencies of a scientific training. What in- 

 justice may be done thereby a glance at the initial 

 -Almanac will show. In this page of " Scots Renascence " 

 design the beautiful markings on the carap.ice of a crab 

 and the exquisite convolutions of a ram's horn are alike 

 replaced by unmeaning and clumsy spirals, the delicate 

 outlines of a butterfly body by a gross shape like a soda- 

 water bottle ; Its wings are indicated by three sausage- 

 shaped excrescences on either side, and the vegetable 

 forms in the decorative border are deprived of all variety 

 and sinuosity in favour of a system of cast-iron semi- 

 circular curves. Now, as a matter of fa^t, provided there 

 is no e.xcess of diagram, his training should render 

 the genuine biologist more acutely sensitive to these ugly 

 and unmeaning distortions than the .iverage educated 

 man. Neither does a biolojjical traininj^ liliiid the eye to 

 the quite fortuitous arrangement of the I Mack masses ir> 

 Mr. Duncan's studies in the art of Mr. lirardsley, to the 

 clumsy line of Mr. Mackies reminisceines of Mr. Walter 

 Crane, or to the amateurish quality of Mr. iJurn-Murdoch. 

 And when Mr. Riccardo Stephens honoiit-. Herrickon his 

 intention rather than his execution, ;nid Mr. Laubach, 

 rejoicing "with tabret and string" at the advent of 

 spring, bleats 



" Now hillock and highway 



Are bmkling and {jlad. 

 Thro' (linjjlc ami Ijyway 



t'lO lassie ami lad," 



it must not be supposed that the frequenters of the 

 biological laborator>', outside the circle imniedialely 

 about Prof Patrick Geddes, are more profoundly stirred 

 than they are when Mr. Kipling, full of knowledge and 

 power, sings of the wind and the sea and tlic heart of the 

 natural man. 



But enough has been said of the artistic merits of this 

 volume. Regarded as anything more than the first 

 efforts of amateurs in art and literature and it makes 

 that claim— it is bad from cover to cover : and even the 

 covers are bad. No mitigated condemnation will meet 

 the circumstances of the case. Imagine the New 

 English Art Club propounding a Scientific Renascence 

 in its leisure moments ! Of greater concern to the 

 readers of Natukk than the fact that a successful pro- 

 fessor may be an indifl'erent art editor, is the attempt on 

 the part of two biologists- real responsible biologists — 

 writing for the unscientific public, to represent Biology 

 as having turned upon its own philosophical implications. 

 Mr. Thomson, for inst.ince, tells his readers that "the 

 conception of the Struggle for Existence as Nature's sole 

 method of progress," " was to be sure a libel projected 

 upon nature, but it h.id enough truth in it to be mis- 

 chievous for a while." So zoologists honour their greatest I 

 " Science," he says, has perceived " how false to natural 

 fact the theory was." " It has shown how primordial, 

 how organically imperative the social virtues are ; how 



