386 



NATURE 



\^Fcb. 25, 1886 



remaining chapters of the volume, geologists will be glad 

 to have brought together the results of the author's ex- 

 tensive study and exceptionally wide experience. While 

 every one will be glad to see the excellent use which has 

 been made of the splendid researches of Delesse and 

 Daubr^e, it might perhaps have been better if the author 

 had relied less implicitly upon some others among the 

 older school of French geologists. All will look forward 

 with interest to the appearance of the second and con- 

 cluding volume of the work, which will treat of strati- 

 graphical geology, and the broader and more theoretical 

 aspects of the science. 



The present volume is worthy of the University Press, 

 from which it is issued ; well printed upon excellent paper, 

 and illustrated by numerous woodcuts ; these have been 

 derived from other standard works, or are founded on 

 sketches by the late Dr. Buckland, while not a few of 

 them bear testimony to the fact that recent publications, 

 like those of the U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, 

 have been freely placed under contribution ; the general 

 appearance of the book is all that could be desired. Among 

 the six excellent folding plates, the first place must be 

 assigned to the beautiful reproduction, on a small scale, 

 of Marcou's geological map of the world, which has been 

 revised by its author for the present work. 



We cannot better conclude this notice of a very im- 

 portant contribution to geological literature than by 

 quoting the sentences in which the author himself defines 

 his position towards the diflerent schools of geological 

 thought. 



" The fundamental c|ucstion of tiute'A.wA force has given 

 rise to two schools, one of which adopts uniformity of 

 action in all time,-— while the other considers that the 

 physical forces were more active and energetic in geologi- 

 cal periods than at present. 



" On the Continent and in America the latter view pre- 

 vails, but in this country the theory of uniformity has 

 been more generally held and taught. To this theory I 

 have always seen very grave objections ; so I felt I should 

 be supplying a want by placing before the student the 

 views of a school which, until of late, has hardly had its 

 exponent in English text-books. 



" The eloquence and ability with which uniformitari- 

 anism has been advocated, furthered by the palpable 

 objections to the extreme views held by some eminent 

 geologists of the other school, led in England to its very 

 wide acceptance. But it must be borne in mind that uni- 

 formitarian doctrines have probably been carried further 

 by his followers than by their distinguished advocate, Sir 

 Charles Lyell, and also that the doctrine of non-uniformity 

 must not be confounded with a blind reliance in cata- 

 strophes ; nor does it, as might be supposed from the 

 tone of some of its opponents, involve any questions 

 respecting uniformity of law, but only those respecting 

 uniformity of action. 



" I myself have long been led to conclude that the 

 phenomena of geology, so far from showing uniformity of 

 action in all time, present an unceasing series of changes 

 dependent upon the circumstances of the time ; and that, 

 while the laws of chemistry and physics are unchange- 

 able and as permanent as the material universe itself, the 

 exhibition of the consequences of those laws in their 

 operation on the earth has been, as new conditions and 

 new combinations successively arose in the course of its 

 long geological history, one of constant variation in degree 

 and intensity of action." 



Extreme Catastrophists — if indeed any such have 

 escaped extinction during the evolution of modern geo- 



logical philosophy — will find little in the way of comfort 

 in the above sentences, or indeed in any part of the 

 volume before us. The most pronounced Uniformitarian, 

 on the other hand, will find equally little to take exception 

 to in the general tone of Prof. Prestwich's conclusions ; 

 he will perhaps only ask that before recourse is had to 

 non-uniformity in the action of existing causes, the in- 

 competency of the uniform action of those causes to 

 produce any particular phenomena shall be distinctly 

 demonstrated. 



THE PICTORIAL ARTS OF JAPAi\ 

 The Pictorial Arts of Japan. With 80 Plates and 

 Chromolithographs, and numerous Engravings on Wood 

 and Copper, and with General and Descriptive Text. 

 By W. Anderson, F.R.C.S., late Medical Officer H.M. 

 Legation in Japan. To be complete in 4 parts. Part 

 I. General History. (London: Sampson Low, 1886.) 

 /^F the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan we know but 

 ^■'^ little. A Polynesian element with some Melanesian 

 admixture probably predominated in the southern, as an 

 Aino element did in the northern, islands. Of the latter 

 race the shell-mounds that line the coasts of the main 

 island have afforded many interesting relics, among 

 others fragments of pottery showing a simple ornamenta- 

 tion recalling the zigzags and curves characteristic of the 

 Zuni and Tesuke pottery of Arizona and New Mexico. 

 It was in the main island, often called Hondo, that the 

 history of Japan began. Not more than two or three 

 centuries probably before the compilation in the eighth 

 century of the Kojiki, the oldest e.xtant document in 

 Japanese literature, a colony of L'ral-Altaic origin occu- 

 pied the broad plain that extends from the northern 

 shores of the Japanese Mediterranean to the foot of the 

 Kiyoto hills. Tradition points to previous settlements of 

 the strangers on the southern islands, whither, pushed by 

 some Central Asian stress from their former home in the 

 Korean peninsula, they had wandered across the narrow 

 waters that separate the Land of Freshness from the 

 Land of Dawn. The new-comers did not easily subdue 

 the Aino tribes, remnants of whom in the north and east 

 still existed, when Yoritomo was created Barbarian-beating 

 Generalissimo in the thirteenth century. More or less 

 amalgamation took place between conquerors and con- 

 quered, but the former did not wholly lose their purity of 

 blood, and, to this day, broad physical differences dis- 

 tinguish the peasantry from the more aristocratic strata 

 of the population — differences amply and graphically 

 rendered in the innumerable drawings of Hokusai. These 

 founders of the Japanese State, which, despite the 

 assertions of native writers, can boast of no high anti- 

 quity, were a simple folk, living principally on fish 

 and the produce of the chase, clothed in hemp and cloth 

 made of broussonetia bark, and dwelling in wattled huts 

 roofed with bark and reeds. It was not until they were 

 touched by Chinese civilisation that they entered upon 

 the evolutionary course which has ended in a somewhat 

 naive preference of the civilisation of the West. 



There is a difference between symbolism, which all races 

 of men have practi sed, and art. The reindeer and mammoth 

 drawings of the Cave-men show that a faculty of correct and 

 even spirited drawing was developed at a very early stage 



