Feb. 10, 1870 | 
NATURE 
381 
were not quite realised on further perusal. M. Micé wrote 
this report at the request of the Soczété des Sciences Phy- 
sigues et Naturedles, who purpose publishing similar reports 
annually. The title, it will be perceived, is perfectly 
general and it might have attracted any student of organic 
chemistry. But the author informs us (p. 1) that his book 
“can only be useful on condition of being methodical 
and containing no more than a Faculty professor can de- 
liver, from memory, tn his lectures.” We should strongly 
recommend M. Micé, especially as he proposes to extend 
this plan to the entire domain of chemistry, to alter his 
title-page before again proceeding to publication. “ Lec- 
ture Notes for Professors of Chemistry ” would be a much 
more appropriate designation ; less pretentious, certainly, 
but having the great advantage of accuracy. Undoubtedly, 
the author has succeeded in producing a rapport métho- 
digue, butit is decidedly not a rapport sur les progres de la 
Chimie organique pure, nor has it that nice adjustment be- 
tween detailsand conciseness which is the essential require- 
ment of sucha treatise. The only work which fulfils and ably 
fulfils these conditions, is the German “ Jahresbericht der 
Chemie,” a model of patient and deliberate composition. 
M. Micé will find prefixed to it a list of some sixty or 
seventy periodicals, containing the various original papers 
to which it refers. We may fairly ask him whether many 
French professors (du haut enseignement) will be satisfied 
with the basis he has selected, viz., five French journals 
and the 3rd edition of MM. Pelouze and Frémy’s ‘‘ Traité 
de Chimie.” Considering that the author has had recourse 
to such a method of shortening his labours, it is not sur- 
prising that the performance should exhibit a generally 
hasty character. At p. 117, for example, we find the fol- 
lowing passage :—“Théine gives up a quarter of its 
nitrogen, creatine a third, the other natural and artificial 
alkaloids one-half.” It so happens that the experiments in 
this particular case, instead of being carried out with ad/ 
nitrogenous organic bodies, were pardonably limited to 
nineteen instances. We regret we cannot commend this 
work, as fulfilling either the promise held out on its 
title-page, or the more limited intention expressed in its 
opening paragraphs. : 
History of Creation.—Za Création d’aprés la Géologie et 
la Philosophie Naturelle. Par J. B. Rames. (Paris: 
Hachette.) 
THIS is an odd book. Even in these days of sensa- 
tional works on science we are not sure that, in his own 
style, M. Rames has been surpassed. His purpose is to 
describe in a kind of prose epic, the history of our planet 
and its inhabitants, from the nebulous condition of the 
solar system down to the present day. Apostrophising 
sun, moon and stars by turns, he tells them how 
they have been fashioned and of what uses they are. 
Tyrants and philosophers come in for appropriate ad- 
dresses and then the writer plunges into the depths of the 
primeval ocean in which the Laurentian rocks were 
formed. He finds its waters hot, charged with silica and 
in the act of depositing crystalline rocks in the form of 
gneiss and schist. One day—whether in the depths of 
the thermal ocean, or in the lakes that dotted the lonely 
islets, he cannot tell—“ Life, one of the special forms of 
solar heat pervading the universe like all the other 
natural forces, finds, for the first time upon our globe in 
little aggregations of inert matter, the conditions which 
allow of its manifestation, and thus rises dimly the dawn 
of an organic kingdom.” The subsequent development 
of these primal germs into the complex genera and species 
of the animal and vegetable world, through its succeeding 
geological formations, forms the subject of the remaining 
portions of the book, of which, however, only the first 
part, reaching into the Permian period, is published. 
M. Rames seeks no adventitious aid from sensational 
pictures : not a single illustration occurs in his book. He 
trusts wholly to the powers of his pen and has certainly 
produced a lively, if not very trustworthy, narrative.—A.G. 
THE WORK OF THE SEA 
{Pes work done by the Sea is infinitely various, im- 
measurable in quantity and of inexpressible value 
to the inhabitants of the earth. It is the one ceaseless 
worker, never resting and ever accomplishing the tasks it 
has to perform. The land and the sea may appear to 
some to be for ever fixed and unalterable, and the map 
of the world represents to them the geography of the globe 
of 6,000, or 60,000 years ago, the geography of to-day, and 
the geography of 60,000 years hence. Still not only-does 
Geology show by the testimony of the far-distant past the 
impossibility of this being so; but it has been given to 
man to see and record the constant rising and falling of 
the land, within the periods of history and even to measure 
the movement with sufficient accuracy and such certainty 
as to enable him to venture predicting, to some extent, on 
the probable geography of the future. 
The Earth is born of the Ocean. Continents‘and islands 
rise out of the sea, new, luxuriant and vigorous ; and like 
ourselves they grow, mature and do their appointed work ; 
then wane and seem to die, though they do zoef die. They 
sink beneath the waves, apparently for ever ; but only to 
be regenerated, renewed, quickened into life and born 
again remodelled. And the sea—the invigorating and 
ever-toiling Mother—works this wonder. 
Mons. Quenault, Sous-Préfet de Coutances, in a little 
book called “ Les Mouvements de la Mer,” has lately given 
us some exceedingly interesting facts, which he has 
gathered from old records, as well as from his own 
observation and other sources, respecting the sinking of 
the land and the encroachments of the sea on the coasts 
of Brittany, Normandy and other places on the western 
borders of France. Thus, in the Gulf of Cordouan at the 
mouth of the Gironde, the sea has advanced 730 metres, 
within twenty-eight years ; the buildings on the Pointe de 
Grave have often been destroyed and rebuilt and the 
lighthouse is now removed, for the third time, more 
inland. The sea flows more than ten metres deep over 
what a short time since was a sandy beach. Twenty-five 
more years and the Atlantic will flow over the marshes of 
Soulac and Verdun ; the Gironde will enter the sea by a 
second embouchure and the Isle of Cordouan, detached 
from the continent, will gradually become a mere rock. 
The legends which are recounted among the population 
of Brittany lead one to think that many places in the 
neighbourhood of the coast—to-day immersed—were 
formerly above the level of the sea. In their native poetry 
and with their passion for the marvellous, the country 
people refer these facts to supernatural agency, where the 
Devil plays a prominent part. The bay of Douarnenez, 
where at high water the depth is considerable, is the site 
of a once flourishing city, the town of Ys, the capital 
of Cornouaille. At the south side, when the tide is low, 
are distinguished clearly, five or six metres under water, 
Druidical remains, altars, portions of walls and ruins of 
various monuments. Again, on the opposite side, near 
Cape Chevre, they are to be found, though not so easily 
seen and not so numerous ; but that they can be seen 
under favourable circumstances there is no doubt what- 
ever. The fishermen there believe all the reefs and rocks 
in the bay to be portions of the ruins. In the 16th cen- 
tury, when the water in the bay was not so deep as now, the 
Canon Moreau was able then to follow the lines of a vast 
enclosure (enceinte) of masonry, and above the sand, in 
the shallower places, he discovered funeral urns, stone 
sarcophagi, &c. The traveller Comby also adds, that 
after a storm which excavated and scooped out portions 
of the sands, one could perceive traces of elm trees, 
disposed with a regularity which shows that a plantation 
existed at this spot. 
Submerged forests have been found on the coasts of 
Brittany and particularly in Finisterre, in the neighbour- 
hood of Morlaix. There are historical documents to 
