258 



NATURE 



\Ang. I, 1872 



having accompanied Livingstone on an excursion to tlic 

 northern end of Lake Tanganyika ; but this statement has 

 not yet been corroborated by the great traveller himself. 

 Livingstone then proceeded to Unyanyembe, which is about 

 a third of the way from Lake Tanganyika to the coa?f, 

 where he found the supplies sent up to him by his old 

 fellow-traveller, Kirk. Here he awaits further supplies, 

 before setting out on a fresh expedition of discovery ; 

 while the correspondent set out for the coast, after having 

 " interviewed " the great traveller to his perfect satisfac- 

 tion, and having obtained material for a whole series of 

 sensational articles. 



Mr. Stanley certainly did useful service, which deserves 

 acknowledgment, in passing on from Unyanyembc to 

 Ujiji, and announcing to Livingstone that the supplies 

 were waiting for him at the former place. But this service 

 has been marred by his subsequent conduct. His duty 

 to his employers obliged him to keep Livingstone's coun- 

 trymen at Zanzibar in as much ignorance as possible, and 

 to withhold ail information ; and it is for his cmploycis. 

 not for Livingstone's countrymen, to thank End reward 

 him. But how is it that the lonely traveller had his mind 

 poisoned against his warmest and truest friend, who had 

 used every means to send him help, and through whose 

 exertions Livingstone had actually been put beyond im- 

 mediate want at Kazeh ? How is it that the ungratefid 

 message was imputed to Livingstone, that he wished all 

 relief expeditions to bo turned back ? How is it that one 

 of Her Majesty's Consuls, the great enemy of slavery, is 

 stated to have sent down to Zanzibar for slave chains ? 

 How is it that Livingstone's letters to his friends are still 

 detained by him to whom they have been entrusted ? 

 None of these acts were obligatory, as regards duty to 

 the New York employers. Judging him even by his own 

 lights, the '" Correspondent " has exceeded his duties to 

 his masters, and has proportionately injured, unneces- 

 sarily, the great traveller out of whom capital was to be 

 made. Mr. Stanley's secrecy, and refusal to give any in- 

 formation concerning Livingstone and his wants, to his 

 countrymen at Zanzibar, has been most injurious to the 

 great traveller's interests ; while the system he is now 

 pursuing of withholding Livingstone's private letters to 

 friends, and even his despatches to the Foreign Office, 

 is most unjustifiable. 



We must repeat that the abandonment of the Relief 

 Expedition, on the ground that its work had been antici- 

 pated, was a very serious, and may become a very fatal, 

 mistake. The correspondent's secret proceedings ought 

 not to have influenced the open and clearly-marked course 

 of the Expedition in any way. Their duty was to relieve 

 and assist Livingstone, and nothing should have turned 

 them from it. As it is, only a party of fifty men, com- 

 manded by an Arab, has been sent up to Livingstone, 

 with stores, arms, and other equipments entirely supplied 

 from the funds of the English Search and Relief Expedi- 

 tion. But, in a letter dated June 3, unfavourable reports 

 have been received of the character of the man who com- 

 mands this party, and it may never reach its destination. 



Dr. Livingstone, it is stated, intends to continue his 

 travels for two years longer ; but it has not yet transpired 

 in what direction he will turn. He will probably endeavour 

 to ccmplete the examination of the great river which he 

 believes to be the head stream of the Nile; or he may 



turn his steps south, as we conjectured in a former num- 

 ber, and solve the interesting geographical question con- 

 nected with the drainage of Lake Tanganyika. He still 

 has a vast field of discovery before him, and his country- 

 men will continue to watch his proceedings with warm 

 sympathy and interest. 



NICHOLSON'S INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY 



Fnfioih/i/inn lo the Study of Bioloi^v. By H. AUeyne 

 Nicholson, M.D., D.Sc, &c. &c., Professor of Natural 

 History and Botany in L'niversity College, Toronto. 

 (Blackwood, 1872.) 



THIS book is an attempt to give a general view of the 

 phenomena manifested by living beings, and to 

 form a sort of basis for a more detailed study of some 

 special branch of biology. It commences with an account 

 of the differences between living and non-living matters, 

 and with a discussion of the nature and conditions of life ; 

 then the distinctive peculiarities of animals and plants are 

 considered, and the principles of biological classification 

 laid down. There follow short chapters on the elemen- 

 tary chemistry of living beings, on the chief physiological 

 functions, and on the varieties of the developmental pro- 

 cess ; and disquisitions on spontaneous generation, 011 

 the origin of species, and on distribution in space and 

 time complete the volume. 



In his preface the author states that his work is intended 

 to be elementary, and useful at the same time both tn the 

 student and the general reader. This double object he 

 can hardly be said to have succeeded in attaining. 

 The book t'nroughout is just one to interest the non- 

 scientific general reader, but not one which can be recom- 

 mended as fitted to lay a sound basis of Ijiological 

 knowledge in the mind of a student. Instead of describing 

 typical instances minutely, and from them deducing the 

 laws of life, the author, with few exceptions, deals through- 

 out in generalities. Protoplasm, for example, is described, 

 but no detailed account is given first of such a body as 

 an amoeba, or a white blood corpuscle, which would be 

 much more fitted to leave on the mind of a beginner a clear 

 and definite idea of the nature and properties of proto- 

 plasm than would any abstract account of its characters in 

 general. So, again, no typical animal or plant is described 

 in detail ; but there is a chapter on tlie g eneral differences 

 between animals and plants, and, as scarcely any charac- 

 ter of either can be mentioned to which there are not ex- 

 ceptions, the result of this method can only be to produce 

 a very dim and confused state of mind in one new to the 

 subject. 



There are, however, worse faults than this in the book. 

 There is a general retrograde tendency in it towards the 

 point from which physiology has of late years been pro- 

 gressing — that of considering the actions manifested in 

 living bodies ns due to a source of energy essentially 

 different from that of all other actions. A curious instance 

 of this is found in the second page of the book, where 

 among the differences between dead and living bodies, 

 the a-L-.thor cites the fact that all the actions of living 

 l;odies are accoiiipanicd by a corresponding destruction 

 of the matter by which these actions are manifested ; of 



