March 28, 1895] 



NA TURE 



507 



under consideration needs but little remark. The de- 

 scriptions are full and accurate, and the figures are nearly 

 all engraved from drawings beautifully executed by Miss 

 Elizabeth F. Bonsall, and leave but little to be desired. 

 Three, however, of the plates— Nos. 2, 10, and 15— are 

 from the author's own drawings, and are fully equal, if 

 not superior, to the rest. 123 species of spiders of the 

 orb-weaving group are described, and, of these, twenty- 

 four are considered to be new to science. Four new 

 genera are also characterised. In every way, part ii. will 

 be of great use and importance to systematic araneo- 

 logists. A portrait of Nicolas Marcellus Hentz (justly 

 called the father of American araneology) forms a most 

 appropriate frontispiece. O. P. Ca.mbridGE. 



THE SEA AND ITS COASTS. 

 Sea and Land, Features of Coasts and Oceans, with 

 special reference to the Life of Man. By N. S. Shaler, 

 Professor of Geology in Harvard University. Illus- 

 trated. (London : Smith, Elder, and Co., ■ 1895 ) 

 IN more than one sense this book is a thin",er one 

 than " Aspects of the Earth." Of the seven essays 

 which it contains — in the main republications — the first 

 four deal with familiar subjects — the work of the sea, its 

 beaches, its depths, and icebergs ; the last three treat of 

 harbours, and introduce some ques tions which are less 

 hackneyed and more interesting. Prof. Shaler writes 

 pleasantly, and his sentences flow easily, but it is some- 

 times possible to read throu gh several paragraphs without 

 much progress in knowledge, or to find a rather large 

 number of well-turned phrases expended in stating what 

 amounts to a truism. But as the preface informs us 

 that the object of the book is " to introduce unpro- 

 fessional students of nature to certain interesting 

 phenomena of the sea- shore and of the depths of the 

 ocean," it is very possible that babes in science will find 

 well-sweetened pap more digestible than strong meat. 

 We must, however, protest against the liberties which 

 Prof. Shaler takes occasionally with our mother-tongue. 

 He is too fond of " telephonese" or "telegraphese," as it 

 might be called This tongue may be good American, 

 but it is not good English. We do not mean to assert 

 that no improvements could be made in the latter, or to 

 pose as prudes of etymological purity, but we object to 

 the coinage of new words, or, rather, the misuse of old 

 words, where grammatical expressions already exist, 

 longer only by a few more letters or, at most, syllables. 

 Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is not always an 

 adornment in speech. Is there any real gain (to take a 

 few examples) in such an adjective as " pivotal," such 

 participles as " fiorded," " forested," " peninsulated," 

 "well-harboured" (i.e. with many harbours), and such a 

 verb as to "raft off" in the sense of transport or carry 

 off like a raft. 



Prof. Shaler is a picturesque writer, and his descrip- 

 tions usually are clear and vivid ; but dangers lurk in 

 the attempt to be graphic when a locality is known only 

 at second-hand. Of this the book before us affords an 

 amusing instance. Speaking of the advance of dunes, 

 he quotes the well-known case of Eccles (Norfolk), 

 saying : "Thus in Britain one of these dunes in the last 

 century invaded the village of Eccles, and buried the 

 NO. 1326, VOL. 51] 



dw ellirgs ar.d the parish church, so that even the top of 



the spire was hidden. After a number of years the 



su ir.mit of the church began to reappear on the leeward 



[.' windward] side of the hill, and in time the remote 



descendants of the dispossessed people may be restored 



to their heritage." But the dwellings had practicallv 



disappeared before the dunes rolled over them: the 



chuich had been a ruin for at least two centuries ; of its 



body only the foundations remained ; there was no spire, 



and apparently never had been one ; and the octagonal 



lantern of the tower was never wholly buried, unless 



the well-known engraving in " Lyell's Principles of 



Geology" represents an exceptional condition of the 



s andhills. So if the descendants of the original villagers 



do return to their ancestral domiciles, they will find 



t htmselves " Lords of the sands, an heritage of waves." 



I ndeed, since Prof. Shaler wrote, even the old tower has 



tumbled down, destroyed by the waves during a gale 



last January. 



We venture also to think that Prof. Shaler takes rather 

 too much for granted in assuming, without a hint that 

 this has been disputed, that great rock basins have been 

 excavated by glaciers. Moreover, he is hardly correct 

 in saying that fjords are restricted to ice-worn regions, 

 for Cornwall can show more than one very respectable 

 imitation of such an inlet, and on the Dalmatian coast 

 they are not rare ; yet we can hardly suppose that even 

 in the coldest part of the Great Ice Age, precipitate 

 glaciers descended from the Montenegrin Highlands to 

 scoop out the Bof.che di Cattaro. But perhaps an inlet 

 of the sea only becomes a fjord when it shallows towards 

 its mouth ; if so, that should have been clearly stated. 

 Doubtless these basin-like fjords are difficult to explain ; 

 but as Prof. Shaler admits the existence of submerged 

 moraines, no excavation need be required. At any rate 

 it would be well, as a preliminary step, to prove that 

 glaciers are agents of excavation to any important 

 extent, for this has been denied by many geologists, who 

 vainly ask to be shown any proofs of such effects in the 

 s ubacrial part of their course. 



But we must not dwell too much on blemishes, which 

 after all are light. Even the four earlier essays, already 

 mentioned, exhibit a certain freshness, for Prof. Shaler, 

 as an American, selects the majority of his examples 

 fr om the other side of the Atlantic, instead of using those 

 which have become the stock-in-trade of every European 

 geologist. By this ijieans more than one point is 

 br ought out more clearly than is usual in English 

 books, because illustrations aie difficult to obtain 

 fr om our own islands, or any readily accessible part of 

 the neighbouring continent. For instance, his remarks 

 on the action of vegetation in a shallow estuary or bay, 

 and particularly on the growth of "mangrove s^vamps" 

 are valuable. He describes how the large tapering 

 cyl indrical seed of the mangrove, floats in a vertical 

 position, settles down and becomes entangled on the 

 bottom by means of the numerous booklets which arm 

 its lower extremity, then sends a shoot up above the sur- 

 face of the water, from which come wide-spreading, low- 

 growing branches. From these long runner-like processes 

 are thrown off, which at last curve sharply downwards 

 through the water till they strike root at the bottom, and 

 then support new crowns, each having its own trunks 



