.^02 



NA TURE 



[January 13, 1910 



medicine," lie says, though he naively confesses in ex- 

 cuse for his charlatanism that, not having had any 

 regular medical training, "/ know I made a very dan- 

 gerous doctor, hut I was obliged to go on as a pedant 

 domineering over a society of ignoratnuscs " — this is 

 very fine, and worthy of being preserved ! Fortunately 

 for Mr. Kawaguchi, the Dalai Lama himself became 

 one of those ignoramuses, and conferred on the 

 "doctor" his intimacy and confidence. But Mr. 

 Kawaguchi is strangely silent as to the subjects of 

 those interesting conversations, beyond the bold 

 general statement that 



" I heard and saw much of him (the Grand Lama) 

 and had frequent interviews with him. I judge that 

 he is richer in thoughts political than religious. He 

 seems to fear the British most, and is alwavs thinking 

 how to keep them from Tibet." 



Living in constant terror of being robbed explains, 

 perhaps, the low opinion our traveller has formed of 

 his Tibetan co-religionists — so widely different from 

 the experience of sympathetic We.«.t;''n travellers like 

 Rockhill and others. He says : — 



" It is impossible to trust oneself entirely to Tibetans, 

 for honesty is observed only among people who are 

 known to one another, and only so long as actions are 

 done before the public gaze. Social restraints are no 

 sooner removed than the T'betan is ready for any 

 crime or enormity "( !). 



Our pious priest, therefore, was perpetually invent- 

 ing falsehoods to deceive his interlocutors, and to 

 "lay false scents," as he terms it. 



When the secret of his disguise leaked out, that he 

 was not a Chinaman, but a Japanese, he tells us that 

 he made a "bolt" from Lhasa to India, assisted by 

 an "ex-Minister and his nun-wife (sic)." As there was 

 no pursuit, however, his excitement on the wav was 

 perhaps more imaginary than warranted. Certainlv 

 we cannot say that he has brought back to us anv 

 information which is new or important. 



The get-up of the book is not at all creditable. It 

 is in the poorest Indian style — it was printed in 

 Madras, and looks it. Misprints also abound, and 

 there is no index. The illustrations have been roughly 

 drawn by a draughtsman in Japan in conventional 

 Japanese style, and exhibit little that is characteristic 

 of Tibet. 



We leave the book with the feeling that the really 

 interesting things have been left out. 



L. A. W.\DDELL. 



CRITICISM IN GEOLOGY. 

 La Geologic ginirale. By Prof. Stanislas Meunier. 

 Pp. xii + 3^4. Second edition. (Paris : Felix Alcan, 

 1909.) Price 6 francs. 

 Evolution geologique de la Terrc et anciennetS de 

 I'Hommc. By Alphonse Cels. Pp. viii + 248. 

 (Brussels : Lebegue et Cie., 1909.) Price 5 francs. 

 ' I 'HE one point common to these two treatises is 

 -L that both authors look with a certain enthusiasm 

 on the earth as an active living whole. Prof. Meunier 

 claims that his originality consists in this. For forty 

 NO. 2098, VOL. 82] 



vcars he has worked towards the expression of a 

 theorv of the earth, in which the guiding idea is that 



" Le globe est un veritable organisme, ou des 

 appareils harmonieusement associ^s poursuivent la 

 r(^alisation de fonctions dont I'ensemble se traduit par 

 les progres d'une Evolution planetaire sans arret." 



The rocks of the earth's crust arc in a state of con- 

 tinuous transformation ; the characters of a stratum 

 belong to all the ages that have passed since the time 

 of its deposition. 



To the mind of the geologist in these islands there 

 is nothing very new in the propositions so clearly set 

 forth in the author's " avertissement," and developed 

 in the w'ork. Some of them, such as the mode of 

 production of flint in limestone (p. 104), and the part 

 played by rain in the excavation of valleys (p. 162), 

 deserve emphasising in lecture-rooms where other 

 views may have prevailed. But they seem rather 

 home-truths nowadays, and are, unfortunately, asso- 

 ciated in the book with much that has been discarded 

 in the face of cumulative evidence, and with much 

 that must be characterised as exaggeration of a 

 special point of view. Prof. Meunier, for instance, 

 seems to regard oolitic structure as essentially of 

 secondary origin in the rocks in which it occurs (p. 

 120); he denies, somewhat late in the day, the glacial 

 origin of the Dwyka conglomerate and similar con- 

 temporaneous deposits (p. 277) ; and, while urging thai 

 springs and waterfalls tend inevitably to recede, he 

 minimises the excavating action of a river throughout 

 its ordinary course. Even where we are all prepared 

 to follow him, his triumphal progress is accompanied 

 by too much slaying of the slain. Vet here, as in his 

 previous works, his comments on current explana- 

 tions of phenomena are always well worth reading. 

 The appearance of a river in a valley as the result 

 of the excavation of the floor down to the surface ot 

 the permanent water-table is not new to students of 

 English "bournes"; but it gives one food for thought 

 when applied to larger and permanent cases. 



The production of a volcano (p. 74) by the faulting 

 up of a hot region over one saturated with water is 

 distinctly fascinating. The essay (pp. 96-103) on 

 "alluvions verticales," including the South African 

 diamond pipes, has novelty, at any rate, in its treat- 

 ment of the subject. The essay by Montlosier on the 

 erosion of volcanic relics in Auvergne, published in 

 1788, was well worthy of resuscitation (p. 15S), and 

 forms an interesting feature of a chapter in which 

 full justice is also done to Poulett Scrope. Prof. 

 Meunier has always maintained the community of 

 origin of volcanic and plutonic igneous rocks of 

 various ages; but we doubt if the diagram on p. 82 

 will gratify students of differentiation. Mr. R. A. 

 Daly, to whom igneous rocks are all basic to begin 

 with, will regard it almost with dismav. 



Prof. Meunier "s remarks on the relics of the latest 

 — and to him the only — ice-age have a Lyellian ring, 

 but will not satisfy the growing school of glacial in- 

 vestigators. ^^■hile he rightly urges that considerable 

 areas remained free from ice, though others became 

 for a time concealed, he can hardly convince us nowa- 

 days that the glacial epoch was a local phenomenon, 



