November 20, 1902] 



NA TURE 



that . . . this Flora will prove valuable to many successive 

 classes of forest students and many successive forest 

 officers whose duties may call them to the beautiful 

 forests of the Dun and the splendid scenery of the ad- 

 joining Himalayan Mountains." 



THE LAWS OF GEOGRAPHY. 

 Les Lois de la Gdographie. ier. Etude. Par Carlos de 

 Mello. Pp. viii + 360. (Berlin : R. Friedlander und 

 Sohn, 1902.) Price 10 marks. 



SENHOR CARLOS DE MELLO, professor of 

 geography at San Paulo, wields the pen of a ready 

 and fearless writer, for he prefaces his volume of 360 

 pages on the laws of geography with the statement that 

 it was written in two months, and the regret that it 

 is consequently neither so clear nor so full as it might 

 otherwise have been. " A short bibliography," he says, 

 "concludes the work " ; but since the bibliography occu- 

 pies 224 pp. and the rest of the work only 136, we are 

 inclined to think that the fact could be better expressed 

 otherwise. Dedicated in Portuguese, written in French, 

 printed and published in Germany, it is evident that the 

 "laws of geography " are superior to the trammels of 

 nationality or language. We were, in fact, unfavourably 

 impressed by the preface, and it required some effort to 

 approach the text with an open mind. On reading the 

 chapters it soon became apparent that, however hastily 

 the book was written, its preparation had required and 

 had received years of thought, and study and wide 

 reading. Even in the minor details of correct transcrip- 

 tion of foreign names and the titles of publications, quite 

 exceptional care must have been taken, for we have rarely 

 seen a book so full of detail equally free from typo- 

 graphical errors. 



The first of the "laws of geography" to be discussed 

 is the law of asymmetry. It is pointed out how rarely 

 parallelism is found in the larger features of the globe, 

 how invariably (except in the case of Africa) a continent 

 occupies a non central position on its continental block, 

 and how the relief of the continent itself displays a con- 

 spicuous dissymmetry, as in the position of the great 

 plateaus of America. From this principle a series of laws 

 of contrasts and harmonies is deduced with much in- 

 genuity and confirmed to a considerable extent by the 

 citation of examples. But even by the device of adopting 

 asymmetry instead of symmetry as the standard of 

 reference, it is impossible to avoid exceptions and con- 

 tradictions. For example, in the "law of contrasts" 

 which declares that the northern continents extend in the 

 direction of the parallels and the southern continents in 

 the direction of the meridians, the anomalous case of 

 Australia is passed over without remark. We cannot 

 help feeling that the author may possibly hold too precise 

 and mathematical a view of symmetry in regard to the 

 great features of the Earth's crust. It seems to us that 

 broad features should be looked at broadly, and that on 

 doing so the Earth's surface exhibits a rough symmetry in 

 the alternation of height and hollow and the interlocking 

 of ocean and continent. To a closer view, of course, the 

 roughness appears more remarkable than the symmetry, 

 but we have a suspicion that the symmetry is there as a 



NO. 1725, VOL. 67] 



dominant fact and the asymmetry only as a detail. We 

 are by no means sure, however, that the author has not 

 started with the idea of the symmetry of terrestrial 

 features as self-evident, and therefore devotes his whole 

 attention to the rectification of the broad principle in 

 details. 



Part ii. deals with the laws of mutual dependence of 

 terrestrial forms, and considers the cases of the relation 

 of rivers to valleys and of continents to oceans. It pre- 

 sents a number of relationships arrived at by many 

 authors whose works were often separated by consider- 

 able intervals of time. Some of these have been accepted 

 and incorporated in current views, others have been 

 passed over and forgotten. We have not space to refer 

 critically to these, or to inquire how far they agree with 

 or contradict the recent systematic discussion of the 

 relation of rivers to their valleys which has culminated in 

 the geographical cycle of Prof. Davis ; but we cannot 

 let pass the opportunity of reviewing this thoughtful sum- 

 mary of a part of geographical theory without inquiring 

 why it is that so much of the work of geographical 

 theorists has passed unproductively into oblivion. The 

 reason may perhaps be that an original mind devoted to 

 purely geographical questions has only arisen at long 

 intervals ; the work of the predecessor has been for- 

 gotten or absorbed as a detail in other sciences before 

 the successor has made himself heard. It may be that 

 this is due to the absence from geography of the numerous 

 less original workers who are attracted to the study 

 of other sciences by prospects of gain, and, while unable 

 to advance the science themselves, at least hand on the 

 torch without extinction. 



Whether this be so or not, the fact is beyond dispute 

 that geography has not made the progress that it should 

 have done ; and, more particularly in this country, the 

 geographer as such is scarcely recognised. Geographical 

 questions have so frequently been treated as incidents in 

 the course of geological, botanical, zoological or historical 

 investigations that even the scientific world hesitates to 

 accept geography as a subject deserving of the whole 

 attention of a competent man. There are signs of im- 

 provement in this respect, it is true, and any improvement 

 is matter for satisfaction. There is room for many books 

 of the type of Prof, de Mello's, and it would be well if 

 such books commanded many readers. The sympathetic 

 attitude of the ancient universities to geography is a 

 gratifying and hopeful circumstance, almost compensating 

 for the inadequate or even retrograde steps of the newer 

 academic centres. H. R. M. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



The Elements of Electrical Engineering. A First Year's 

 Course for Students. By Tyson Sewell, A.I.E.E. 

 Pp. xi + 332. (London : Crosby Lockwood and Son, 

 1902.) Price 7.J. bd. net. 

 This book, which is based upon courses of lectures 

 delivered by the author, is primarily designed for students 

 attending evening or other courses at the polytechnics. 

 The course of lectures is more or less complete in itself, 

 the necessary elementary theory being by no means 

 neglected ; the author, indeed, advises students to take a 

 concurrent course in the scientific side of the subject, 

 but such as are unfortunately unable to spare the neces- 

 sary time will not, we think, find much in this book 



