Sept. 8, 1870] 
NATURE 
373 
Buddhist religion; but Chao Phya Thipakon is con- 
vinced that Buddha knew quite well the truth about the 
real order of the world, and that he accommodated his 
language to the prevailing conceptions of his time, only 
that he might be the more free to proclaim his doctrines 
on higher subjects. Hence it is proclaimed lawful for a 
modern Buddhist to open his mind readily to all the 
results of modern research. Some of the semi-religious 
customs of his countrymen the ex-minister rationalises in | 
a most amusing way. For instance, the beating of gongs 
and firing of guns which take place on the occasion ot 
an eclipse, are by no means what they are generally repre- 
sented—an effort to frighten the dragon who holds the 
sun in his jaws, so as to make him drop it; they are the 
expressions of the popular pride and pleasure that the 
mathematicians of the country are able to predict the time 
when the eclipse shall occur! 
gical portions of this book, we have, of course, nothing to 
do here ; but we may state that in comparing the different 
religions of the world with his own, Chao Phya Thipakon 
is as far removed as possible from a fanatical spirit. He 
expounds his views calmly, and appears always ready to 
accept new light from whatever quarter it may come. The 
objections he raises to the Christian theory of the world 
betoken a thoughtful and inquiring mind, although, unfor- 
tunately, those from whom he derived his ideas of | 
Christianity seem to have been exceptionally poor repre- 
sentatives of their cause. The ethical conceptions of the 
book are generally of a very noble character. In one 
point—the proper treatment of the lower animals—the 
writer, of course, carries his doctrine too far, and he 
certainly bases it on grounds with which Westerns can 
have no sympathy ; but there can be no doubt that he is 
practically far nearer the fruth than the great mass of 
Europeans of our ownday. On the whole, this book may 
be accepted as a good omen for the future of the East. 
It proves that amongst the best minds a genuine spirit of 
inquiry has been aroused, and that the old cosmogonies 
and superstitions are already beginning to give way before 
more scientific conceptions of man and the world. 
OUR BOOK SHELF 
Tow Crops Feed: a Treatise on the Atmosphere and the 
Soil as related to the Nutrition of Agricultural Plants. | 
By Samuel W. Johnson. (New York: O. Judd and Co.) 
MR. JOHNSON’s earlier treatise, “ How Crops Grow,” has 
been rendered familiar to the English public through 
Messrs. Church and Dyers admirable edition, and 
forms a complete manual of the structure and physiology 
of the plant, treated in a manner specially adapted for 
agricultural students. The present work is intended as a 
companion treatise on everything connected with the nutri- 
tion of plants. The subject divides itself naturally into two 
sections, the first relating to the atmosphere, and the 
second to the soil, as sources of the food of plants. The 
question whether plants derive their nitrogen direct from 
the free element in the atmosphere was long a vexed one 
among physiologists. Mr. Johnson details tle experiments 
With the strictly theolo- | 
which were thought to favour the argument on both sides, | 
giving the preference, and we think rightly, to the later 
researches of Boussingault, and those of Lawes, Gilbert, 
and Pugh, which appear to demonstrate that the enor- | 
mous quantity of free nitrogen in the air is not available for 
the food of plants; but that they draw their supply of it 
from the extremely minute quantities of ammonia and other 
nitrogenous compounds that form an essential ingredient 
of the atmosphere. Under the head of water as an 
element in plant-food, we miss any reference to the 
recent important researches of Dehérain, which show 
that the evaporation of water from leaves is determined 
entirely by light, and by those rays only which are effica- 
cious in the decomposition of carbonic acid, and that it 
may proceed in a perfectly saturated atmosphere. This 
omission will probably be supplied should an English 
edition be published. The second portion of the work 
relates to the soil as a source of food for plants, and is 
the one which will be of special interest and value to 
practical agriculturists. Here we find treated in an ex- 
haustive manner the origin and formation of soils, the 
kinds of soil, their definition and classification, their 
physical characters, and the soil as a source of food to 
crops, including those ingredients whose elements are of 
atmospheric origin, and those whose elements are derived 
from rocks. We can do no more than recommend to the 
notice of those interested in agriculture a work which we 
believe will be found a reliable handbook to that scientific 
knowledge in which the bulk of English agriculturists are 
at present so lamentably deficient. The most scientific of 
all manual occupations is actually conducted on a system 
which is a mixture of complete empiricism and unscien- 
tific theory. 
Reflections, Historical and Critical, on the Revival of 
Philosophy at Cambridge. By C. M. Ingleby, M.A., 
LL.D. (Cambridge: Hall and Son, 1870.) 
IN this drochure of some eighty pages, after tracing the 
origin and fortunes hitherto of the Moral Science Tripos 
at Cambridge, Dr. Ingleby seeks to gauge the efficiency 
of its present constitution by a threefold test ; reviewing 
the selection that has been made of examiners, the pre- 
scription that is made of books, and the composition of 
some examination-papers lately set. It is shown how, 
more than thirty years ago, when philosophy was all but 
extinct in Cambridge, Sir William Hamilton, of Edin- 
burgh, in vehemently (as his manner was) attacking Dr. 
Whewell’s views of the prerogative character of mathema- 
tics in a liberal education, threw out the idea of a Moral 
Science Tripos, which sixteen years later it was reserved 
for his contemptuous opponent himself to carry into effect. 
So established, how coldly the new Tripos was, and has 
continued to be, looked upon by the dispensers of College 
favours, is next brought out with much evidence. In the 
choice of examiners, the remarkable fact is the preference 
shown for men not distinguished in the Tripos itself ; 
| two only, out of forty-six first-class Moral Science men 
within the ten years from 1851, having later been en- 
trusted with the examining function! But it is in the 
list of books prescribed and in the examination-paper 
that Dr. Ingleby finds most scope for criticism. As ré- 
gards books he is angry, not without reason, at the omis- 
sion of certain works, and angrier, for reasons sometimes 
oddly expressed, at the inclusion of certain others ; in the 
cnd, he would appear not greatly to mind if, among 
moderns before Kant, for the sake too of Kant, Hume 
only were retained. The questions set on modern philo- 
sophical systems seem to him “ mere afercus of outsiders,” 
seldom showing true intellectual mastery and grasp. 
Dr. Ingleby is always lively in his narrative, often 
forcible in his criticism, and more than once, when he 
becomes personal, a little violent. To English thinkers 
all round he administers raps on the knuckles with much 
impartiality, but the full weight of his cudgel is for the 
backs of Mr. Mill and Prof. Bain. He may be said to 
write as a disciple of Kant (with more or less of outlook 
towards Hegel); and every true student of mental 
science will be with him in his wish to see the great 
father of German philosophy reaily and at first hand 
acknowledged in Cambridge. When, however, his en- 
thusiasm carries him to say that no philosophy that 
does not derive from Kant is able to explain the 
