June i8, 1896] 



NA TURE 



147 



of adaptations to environment, is c ieaily stated ; and the 

 view of a land-surface modelled by the action of its 

 rivers, and passing through the consecutive stages of 

 adolescence, maturity, old age, and decrepitude, with a 

 possible rejuvenescence by partial upheaval during the 

 later stages, is set forth in an attractive manner. This 

 's perhaps the nearest approach to a theory of physical 

 geography which has yet been ad\ anced, and the results 

 of apphing it serve to invest with fresh interest the 

 monotonous topography of regions which, having run 

 their course of natural life, await in the condition of a 

 " peneplain " the revivifying tectonic power which will 

 start their old sluggish rivers into fresh activity, throwing 

 them out of harmony with their surroundings, and setting 

 them to work to dig, carry, and build until they have 

 created a new land, and, as is the way of the world, again 

 destroyed it. 



Looking on a river as an individual, or rather as a 

 living system, any change in one part is shown to 

 affect the whole. For example, the slow cutting down 

 of the outlet of a lake, the surface of which serving as 

 a base-level has dictated the configuration of the country 

 above, lowers the level, accentuates the upper slopes, 

 quickens the tributaries one by one, causing them to 

 erode their valleys more vigorously, and in time perhaps 

 to work back and tap the affluents of some other system, 

 reversing their flow and extending the sphere of the 

 power of the main river. The continual adaptation of 

 river to land may in large measure be taken as the key 

 to the origin of scenery in regions of normal drainage. 



Prof de Lapparent does not view aqueous erosion as 

 all-powerful ; he gives great weight to tectonic changes 

 in preparing the way and laying down the lines along 

 which erosion is to act, as, for example, in outlining the 

 depressions of fjord and lake valleys. To glaciers he 

 assigns a comparatively humble place : they cannot 

 dig, but they are excellent polishers, and inexhaustible 

 carriers ; while if they cannot make valleys, they may at 

 least preserve them unfilled for future occupation by 

 lakes. The treatment of regions of internal drainage 

 with their arid climates and characteristic a;olian land- 

 forms is particularly good. 



We cannot, of course, attempt to summarise here a 

 volume of six hundred pages, in which there is a steady 

 unfolding of a definite plan supported by innumerable 

 examples. It is only possible to allude to the chief 

 contents, .\fter the geomorphogenic introduction, two 

 lessons are given to geological principles and their appli- 

 cation in pahi'ogeography, or the reconstruction of the 

 map of the world in past ages. This introduces the 

 systematic description of Europe, and of the other con- 

 tinents in less detail, from the point of view of the origin 

 of their land-forms. Although necessarily in general 

 terms, the description is sufficiently full to give a fair 

 idea of the origin of all the more striking features of 

 mountain and plain, and the general hydrographic 

 system. There are points which might be criticised in 

 detail ; for example, one of the most important features 

 in the existing geography of .Scotland — the 25-foot raised 

 beach which forms the sites of almost all the coast towns, 

 both on the east and west — is not mentioned, but the 

 larger features are very clearly described. 



The work of M. de Lapparent builds largely upon the 

 NO. 1390, VOL. 54] 



foundations of Suess, Penck, Richthofen, and numerous 

 British and American geologists whose contributions 

 to knowledge are carefully acknowledged. It is em- 

 phatically a book for teachers and for students of 

 geography ; a model of strong and clear reasoning in 

 the elaboration of a theory where no theory was generally 

 recognised before, and a rich storehouse of facts and 

 references full of suggestiveness, and affording evidence 

 of the widest reading and the most careful thought. 



Hugh Robert Mill. 



THE RESEARCHES OF NEWELL MARTIN 



UPON THE HEART AND RESPIRATION. 

 Physiological Papers. By H. Newell Martin. Reprinted 

 as Memoirs from the Biological Laboratory of the 

 Johns Hopkins University. III. 4to. Pp. 264. (Balti- 

 more : Johns Hopkins Press, 1895.) 

 THE Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore was 

 founded in the year 1876, and Newell Martin left 

 Cambridge, to the personal regret of all his English 

 friends, to become the first occupant of the chair ot 

 Biology. This he held during seventeen years, in the 

 course of which the department over which he presided 

 grew from small beginnings to large and extensive 

 laboratories fully furnished with apparatus, animals and 

 privatdocents in the most up-to-date Teutonic style. In 

 the summer of 1893, Prof Martin was compelled by ill- 

 health to resign his professorship, and in recognition of 

 the value of his work, and as a token of their affection 

 and esteem for him, his American friends and pupils 

 have republished the scientific papers and some of the 

 public addresses which were written and delivered by 

 him during his tenure of the chair. 



Most of the work done by Prof. Martin during this 

 period is upon the action of the mammalian heart, 

 and the papers upon this subject occupy nearly one 

 half of the volume. As all physiologists know, Martin 

 was the first to carry out with success experiments 

 upon the action of the isolated heart of the mammal, 

 most of our knowledge regarding the isolated heart 

 having been derived from experiments upon cold- 

 blooded animals. It was not to be expected that 

 there would be any serious divergences in the mode 

 of action of the heart in the two cases, and in fact 

 the results which Martin and his pupils obtained re- 

 garding the effects of pressure of temperature and of 

 drugs were such as might probably have been antici- 

 pated. Nevertheless it marked a distinct advance in 

 what the Royal Society officially terms " natural know- 

 ledge " to have succeeded in determining these points in 

 the mammal, and that Society set the stamp of its 

 recognition upon the work by selecting one of the 

 most important of these jjapers as the Croonian lecture 

 for 1883. 



The other researches relate exclusively to the 

 mechanism of respiration in the frog and in the 

 mammal. The peculiar character of the respiration 

 in the former animal has always excited the interest of 

 physiologists, and in more recent years it had been 

 studied graphically by Paul Bert and Burdon- Sanderson. 

 Martin subjected the normal respiratory movements in 

 the frog to a careful examination and arrived at con- 



