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NATURE 



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work, and can make itself felt more and more as years 

 roll on, and we believe that if the future governing body 

 of the Institute is a truly representative one, that is, if 

 science is properly represented on it, by such men as the 

 President of the Royal Society, the Directors of the 

 Royal Gardens and of the Geological and Topographical 

 Surveys, that such functions as those we have suggested 

 will be obvious. 



To turn now to another part of the scheme, the Report 

 wisely suggests that the new Emigration Office should 

 form part of it. With this we cordially agree. But the 

 return current must be provided for. Those who have 

 lived in England's colonies and dependencies know best 

 the intense home feeling, and in many cases the stern 

 necessity there is of close contact with the mother country. 

 Let the Imperial Institute be England's official home 

 of her returning children, the Hall in which she officially 

 welcomes them back. Let them here find all they need, 

 and let information and welcome be afforded with no 

 stinted hand. 



Along the two large lines we have indicated, we believe 

 that there are efforts to be made which could only be 

 effective as connected with such an institution as an 

 Imperial Institute, and we believe that they are more ger- 

 mane to its functions than some of the minor utilities 

 shadowed forth in the Report. 



The Committee has certainly made out its case in 

 favour of South Kensington. And it will be generally 

 conceded that, if the Institute has for its chief objects 

 the binding together of the various developments of 

 science and art in the mother country and her colonies 

 into one homogeneous whole, the Commissioners for the 

 Exhibition of 1851 would be perfectly justified in making 

 the valuable gift to the Institute which is referred to in 

 the Report. 'We shall not follow the Times in gibing at 

 South Kensington. To us South Kensington means the 

 Science and Art Department, with its schools, museums, 

 and laboratories, and the Natural History Museum ; and 

 we know that these institutions have had no more to do 

 with the various shows there during the last few years 

 than they have with the services of the Oratory, with 

 which they are also geographically associated. 



It is with several unpleasant reminiscences connected 

 with these shows still in our minds that we are somewhat 

 doubtful of that part of the Report which refers to the 

 e-ihibitions of various Imperial products, and we believe 

 the only safeguard possible, if they are really instituted, 

 would be that they should be open free to the pubUc like 

 the National Museums. 



HISTORICAL GEOLOGY 

 The Student's Hand-book of Historical Geology. By A. 



J. Jukes-Browne. (London : George Bell and Sons, 



1886.) 

 C^OOV) wine needs no bush, but every prudent vintner 

 will carefully abstain from hanging out a sign calcu- 

 l.ited in any way to convey to the passer-by the impression 

 that the liquor to be obtained within is of inferior 

 cjuaUty. If authors were equally cautious, we should not 

 see, as in the case before us, a good book disfigured by a 

 frontispiece, to say the least, not calculated to produce a 

 favourable impression on the mind of one who opens the 



work for the first time. The plate in question is a fanciful 

 representation of what some one has imagined may have 

 been the distribution of land and sea during the Carboni- 

 ferous period. It depicts the present bed of the North 

 Atlantic as then occupied by a broad tract of continental 

 land. Now, when we picture to ourselves a long tongue 

 of land running out, during Carboniferous times, from 

 Scandinavia across the Highlands of Scotland and on to 

 the north and west of Ireland, we are well within the 

 bounds of legitimite speculation. The arguments in 

 favour of such an hypothesis are too well known to need 

 reproduction here. Again, when we look at a geological 

 map of North America, and note how the great central 

 tract of Palaeozoic formations is even now hemmed in on 

 the north and east by a belt of Archsan rocks, we are 

 indulging in no improbable supposition if we infer that, 

 during Palaeozoic times, the eastern Archsan strip ex- 

 tended further to the east than now, and that from it was 

 derived part of the material for the formation of the rocks 

 of the Palaeozoic basin. But it is obviously quite another 

 thing if, on the strength of these two highly probable sup- 

 positions, we proceed to fill up the whole of the interven- 

 ing ocean. It is a puzzle to our mind to imagine on 

 what grounds any one can preteird to know what was 

 the condition of things in mid-Atlantic so far back in the 

 earth's history, and any attempt to lay down such a map 

 as figures in the frontispiece to the present volume seems 

 to be about as striking an instance as can be found of the 

 unscientific use of the imagination. 



Luckily a very slight acquaintance with the book itself 

 will dispel the unfavourable impression likely to be created 

 by its frontispiece, but the introduction of this map has 

 permanently impaired the usefulness of the present 

 edition, because the money spent on it would probably 

 have sufficed to furnish a number of illustrations of real 

 value, whicli are very much wanted. The book contains 

 careful descriptions of the physical geography of the 

 British Islands at different geological periods, but mere 

 verbal accounts of the distribution of land and sea are 

 hard to follow ; and if each had been accompanied by a 

 small outline map the value of these really important 

 descriptions would have been more than doubled. 



To pass to our author's treatment of the several forma- 

 tions. In the case of each he begins with a general 

 sketch, in which he explains, among other matters, the 

 grounds on which the formation was established and 

 received a distinctive name ; then follows a summary of 

 the life of the period, illustrated by woodcuts of rather 

 unequal execution ; after this he proceeds to detailed 

 stratigraphy, describing the minor subdivisions and the 

 lithological character of their rocks at the principal locali- 

 ties where the formation has been studied ; and he con- 

 cludes with restorations of the physical geography of each 

 period. Detailed stratigraphy in a work of the present 

 size must necessarily be very condensed ; and it is a 

 question whether under this head an attempt has not 

 been made to be too encyclopredic. In his nomenclature 

 the author perhaps shows some weakness for new names ; 

 the restorations of old physical geography seem to be 

 accurate and cautious, and as successful as they can be 

 made without illustrative maps. 



In the account of the Archa;an rocks he displays a 

 caution and a freedom from dogmatism and partisan 



