Fcb.s, 1 8 74 J 



NATURE 



261 



the French capital." As to the justice of this remark we 

 need only appeal to the recent numbers of the " Annales 

 des Sciences Naturellcs " and the " Nouvelles Annales du 

 Musce," which are replete wilh zoological memoirs of the 

 highest interest, and to the great work on fossil birds, 

 by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, recently completed, which 

 is alone sufficient to refute such a sweeping accusation. 

 That the spirit of scientific enterprise is still alive in 

 France is, moreover, sufficiently manifest by the grand 

 researches of Pere David in Chinese Tibet, and of Grandi- 

 didier in Madagascar, while there is certainly no lack of 

 scientific experts to bring their discoveries before the 

 public. A more baseless and unjust attack was certainly 

 never penned against the savants of a sister nation. 



But when our English critic proceeds to suggest that 

 eithfer the general editor of the present work, Prof. Milne- 

 Edwards, or the joint author of the part devoted to the 

 Reptilia — the late Prof. Dumeril (for his remarks may be 

 intended for either of these gentlemen)— has appropriated 

 the funds devoted to its preparation and left the labour to 

 be performed by some inferior subordinate, the matter 

 becomes still more serious. It is, however, sufficient to 

 reply that no sort of evidence is given to support these 

 statements, and that the value of Dr. Gray's ipse dixit is 

 not sufficiently appreciated among naturalists to induce 

 them to accept such an impossible supposition. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 

 Sahara and Laplatid. Travels in the African Desert 

 and the Polar World. By Count Goblet D'Alviella. 

 Translated from the French by Mrs. Cashel Hoey. 

 (London : Asher and Co., 1874.) 



At first sight it would seem that no two countries had 

 less in common than the two about which this book is 

 written ; but Count D'Alviella ingeniously and correctly 

 shows, in his thoughtful preface, that they, or rather the 

 Lapps and Arabs, have many circumstances in common. 

 These two peoples " lead the same vagabond existence ; 

 they live exclusively upon their herds, they carry with 

 them all they have and that they possess, and they make 

 analogous migrations at the changes of the seasons — the 

 Lapps from the Swedish steppes to the Norwegian valleys, 

 the Arabs from the plains of Sahara to the pastures of 

 Tell. In this manner of life they have both acquired the 

 same strength of constitution, or rather the same power 

 of resisting such iatiguc, privations, and weather as would 

 kill the most robust European. . . . Both the Lapps 

 and the Arabs — who are rather the slaves than the mas- 

 ters of Nature — owe their consciousness of isolation and 

 powerlessness to the same superstitions, the same beliefs 

 in spirits, to the ' evil eye,' in amulets, and in incanta- 

 tions. . . . Both races — restricted for centuries to a 

 form of society unsuitable to any kind of progress — affect 

 the same respect for the routine of their ancestors, and 

 the same disdain for the arts of civilisation." The author 

 concludes rightly, we think, that both peoples, incapable 

 as they are of transformation or civilisation, are doomed 

 to disappearance. Many attem|)ts have been made by 

 the Swedish and French Governments to get these 

 nomads to settle down into civilised life, but invariably 

 without success. The author, on the authority of M. 

 Charles Martins, relates that the French Government 

 gave to a number of the poorest Arabs of the Sahara 

 some fertile fields with a ready-built village, and even a 

 mosque in the middle of it. They reserved the houses 

 for their flocks, and pitched their tents in the streets ; 

 until one day the nostalgia of the desert seized upon them, 

 and they returned rejoicing to their wandering life. 



Count D'Alviella tells the narrative of his travels in 

 these two regions very pleasantly. He is a cheerful and 

 observant and somewhat philosophic guide, and we can 

 assure anyone who cares to buy this work, that he will get 

 the value of his money in enjoyment and information. 

 The narrative of the Lapland journey is especially inte- 

 resting, and contains information about a people and 

 a country that we believe many know but little 

 about. Here will be found an account of the mode of 

 life of a people that in many respects may be taken as 

 the living type of the men who, ages ago, struggled 

 for existence amid conditions very different from those 

 which now obtain in Europe, and whose implements and 

 remains come within the province, not of the historian, 

 but of the geologist. 



Mrs. Hoey deserves credit for her excellent translation. 

 The volume contains a number of fairly executed illus- 

 trations. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor doa not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. No notice is taken of anonymous 

 covimu7iicatio7is.\ 



M. Barrande and Darwinism 



In the article in Nature (vol. ix. p. 228) on M. B.irrande's 

 "Trilobites," published in 1S71, several statements are made 

 which require not only considerable modification as to the facts 

 then known, but which are entirely misleading when m.ide to ap- 

 pear to represent the state of our knowledge of these acts at the 

 present time. M. Barrande is well known to be a determined 

 opponent to the theory of evolution, and doubtless this strong 

 bias has prevented him fr.jin seeing and accepting many facts 

 which would otherwise, to so keen and careful an observer, have 

 seemed inconsistent with such strong views. The list of fossils 

 given by him from the Cambrian formation, and which is repro- 

 duced in Nature, is most incomplete and inaccurate when made 

 to refer to the Cambrian fauna of this country, as will be evident 

 at once by referrmg to p. 249 of the same work, where a list of 

 fossils discovered by me in the " Hailech or Superior Longmynd " 

 group of Wales is given, and which includes several trilo- 

 bites ; and yet in the above-mentioned article it is stated "that 

 no trace of a trilobite has been found in the Cambrian for- 

 mation." Surely no English geologist will be bold enough to 

 deny to the name Cambrian its righi to these Harlech and Long- 

 mynd rocks, whatever else it muy not be entitled to. Nor, 

 indeed, did Sir R. Murchison and the Geological Survey ever 

 attempt such a breach, and I cannot believe that M. Barrande 

 has realised what such an assumption means, or what it 

 would lead to ; nor can I believe that it is possible for 

 him to have followers in this country in such a "violation 

 of historic truth," and, as observed by Prof. Sterry Hunt 

 (in the Canadian Naturalist, vol. vi. p. 448), for no other 

 reason than "that the primordial fauna has now been shown by 

 Hicks to extend towards their base." Surely this country, which 

 has not only given to scientific nomenclature the name Cambrian, 

 but which has given to all other countries the groundwork upon 

 which to build up theirs, should have a right to explain the suc- 

 cession in its own way, and especially when it is proved that its 

 succession of these rocks is clearer and more natural than has 

 been hitherto found to be the case in any other country. Indeed 

 it is quite clear that M. Barrande has not yet succeeded, in 

 Bohemia, in reaching this early fauna, and it is evident also that 

 his first zone of life is only equal in order of appearance to the 

 latter part of our second zone, and hence the mistake to attempt 

 to correlate our fauna with his zone. 



At St. David's in South Wales, the Cambrian of the Geologi- 

 cal Survey, consisting of red, purple, and green rocks, attains a 

 thickness of over five thousand feet of beds resting conformably, 

 and of these beds over four thousand feet have yielded evidence, 

 in the form of fossils, of lite having existed in the seas in which 

 they were deposited. Ths forms of life comprised annelids, 

 bra.hiopods, pteropods, bivalve crustaceans, tiih'bites, and 

 sponges, and I think it would be seen on examination that the 

 picture offered by this early fauna is not one in discordance with 

 Dnrninism, a; assumed in the article in question. But as M, 



