542 



NA TURE 



[February 8, 1906 



I METRICAL AND PICTORIAL RECORD OF 

 I HL EARTH'S HISTORY. 1 



THE author of lliis curious book tells us that it is 

 an attempt to present a sketch of the evolution 

 of the earth on the nebular hypothesis, to note also 

 subsequent sea and land movements, and successivi 

 appearances of life as revealed by the geological 

 strata. The geological record of past life remains 

 very imperfect; still, many additions, notably from 

 strata in Egypt and North America, have been made 

 in recent years, and studied in the light of the doctrine 

 of evolution its revelations have become more intel- 

 ligible. 



Why the author should imagine that to describe in 

 rhyme the history of our planet and its inhabitants, 

 from the earliest times to the present day, would 

 render the subject simpler and more attractive to the 

 general reader it is hard to imagine; but still, pre- 

 cedents are not wanting in such works as Dr. Dar- 

 win's "Temple of Nature," Pope's " Iliad," Henry's 

 " Latin Grammar," and a poetic history of Eng- 

 land, to justify the author's conten- 

 tion that it is an appropriate form 

 in which to present a cosmical and 

 pateozoological work to the public. 



We fully agree with him that the 

 theme is deserving of a much 

 higher form of treatment, and that 

 some day a great poetic genius may 

 take it in hand. We cannot help 

 feeling, however, that prose would 

 have best befitted the aim of the 

 present work. The author has had 

 both an academic and geological 

 training, and knows, from the study 

 of text-books, museums, and exten- 

 sive travel, a great deal about the 

 subject on which he rhymes, and he 

 has had the advice and assistance 

 of a great number of learned scien- 

 tific men whose names are duly re- 

 corded in prose in the preface. But 

 the feature which renders this work 

 of special interest is its fine series 

 of illustrations, fourteen being 

 executed in colour-processes by 

 E. Bucknall, L. Speed, C. Whym- 

 per, and others, and seventy-seven 

 by tint process reproduction. These 

 give animation and attractiveness to 

 the work, and will doubtless induce 

 many purchasers by the beauty or the weirdness of 

 the subjects pourtrayed. 



Commencing with the astronomical aspect of the 

 earth, there is a very fine plate of " the great Nebula 

 of Orion " (from the Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin. 

 U.S.A.). and of "a Spiral Nebula in Canes 

 venatici," from the Lick Observatory, California. 



There is a charming Cambrian marine scene with 

 crinoids, star-fish, trilobites, and medusae, drawn by 

 Alice B. Woodward, and an equally attractive Silurian 

 {submarine) view by the same artist. No fewer than 

 thirty plates have been executed by J. Smit, who illus- 

 trated two little books by the Rev. H. N. Hutchinson 

 called " Extinct Monsters " and " Creatures of Other 

 D.ivs." But having become accustomed to the life- 

 like restorations of Mr. Chas. R. Knight, made under 

 the direction of Prof. H. F. Osborn, of the American 



1 "Nebula to Man." By Heniv R. Knipe. With Illustrations by 

 F.rnest Bucknall, fohn Charlton, Joseph Smit, Lancelot Sp-ed Char!e, 

 Whvmp..,-, Edward A. Wilson and Alice B. Woodward. Pp xvi 

 with 16 coloured pmr illustrations and 57 tilted page illustrations. (London : 



M. Dentand Co ) Price.-,. 1 et. 



Museum of Natural History, New York, we feel that 

 Mr. Smit's extinct animals are tamer and somewhat 

 lacking in that high artistic merit which Mr. Knight's 

 drawings possess. The coloured plates by E. Buck- 

 nall. L. Speed, and Charles Whymper are of a dif- 

 ferent order. E. Bucknall's cave-men carving on 

 bones by firelight (p. 200), the " Neolithic Farmstead " 

 (p. 214), the landscape in the Carboniferous period 

 (p. 35), or his excellent conception of Sivatherium, a 

 huge horned Pliocene giraffe, with a dappled hide like 

 its long-necked modern descendant are most admir- 

 able. Lancelot Speed's primitive man and woman, 

 although a clean shaven and washed, and intellectual 

 looking couple, make a very good frontispiece. His 

 Devonian, Triassic, and Eocene landscapes are also 

 excellent and original. There is much merit and 

 ability displayed in Chas. Whymper's Jurassic land- 

 cape with pterodactyls and a gavial hunting the 

 •luck-billed Ornithorhynchus, but we do not remember 

 this monotreme occurring in any Jurassic rocks. The 

 other novelties afforded by the book illustrations are 

 from the facile pencil of Alice Woodward, as the 



NO. 1893, VOL. 73] 



Jurassic period (p. 62), with its ammonites and crus- 

 taceans; the restoration of Diplodocus carnegiei 

 (p. 72); the Cretaceous sea-beasts (p. S3); Polacanthus, 

 a reptile from the Isle of Wight reconstructed by Dr. 

 Francis Baron Nopcsa (p. 88) ; restorations of various 

 ancestral forms of elephants lately unearthed in Egypt ; 

 Mceritherium (p. 114); Paljeomastodon (p. 114); and 

 Tetrabelodon (p. 125); most remarkable of all those 

 lati I3 come from trie land of the Sphinx is the Arsinoi- 

 therium (p. 120), a weird-looking herbivor, with quad- 

 ricorn defences on its frontal bones and a full denti- 

 tion of 44 teeth in its jaws — not, however, in the ances- 

 tral line of elephants, nor perhaps of any living 

 group, but stii generis. This, and the ancestral forms 

 of elephants, are about to be published by the Trustees 

 of the British Museum, as a monograph on the fossil 

 mammalia, &c, from the Favum, Egypt, prepared bv 

 Dr. C. W. Andrews. 



The only other extremely novel restoration is that of 

 the huge marsupial, Diprotodon (p. 172), the remains 

 of which have been found in such profusion in the 

 interior of South Australia bv Dr. Stirling. The pic- 



