April 18, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



607 



jects, testing by his own experience their 

 power to interest and instruct. Tried in this 

 way, I have found many of these little books 

 quite inspiring, and have learned much from 

 them. 



The Home University Library volumes are 

 larger and more pretentious, averaging about 

 250 pages, but selling at the very moderate 

 price of 56 cents, post free. The Cambridge 

 Manuals, with about 150 pages, sell for 40 

 cents net. The general appearance of the 

 Home University volumes is very good, but 

 I do not like the " rose-colored art cloth " of 

 the Cambridge books, while the cover design, 

 reproduced from a wood-cut of the year 1581, 

 is ugly if historically interesting. The Cam- 

 bridge Manuals usually deal with more spe- 

 cific or limited topics than the other books, 

 and consequently are often more detailed or 

 concrete. From the standpoint of a student 

 this seems to be an advantage. The volumes 

 are too numerous to be separately reviewed in 

 detail, but a few notes on some of them may 

 be useful. 



Home University Lihrary 

 Matter and Energy. By F. Soddy. 



Very interesting and useful to one who is 

 not a physicist. It is worth while to quote a 

 few stimulating paragraphs : 



Our most fundamental conceptions are, like our- 

 selves, material. The elaboration of tliem is easy, 

 but their simplification to suit the immaterial 

 world, whither we now wish to embark, is difficult 

 almost to impossibility. If our minds habitually 

 thought in terms of electricity and magnetism 

 instead of in terms of matter and motion, what 

 a world would be opened up! (p. 165). 



Modern science, however, and its synonym, mod- 

 ern civilization, create nothing, except knowledge. 

 After a hand-to-mouth period of existence, it has 

 come in for and has learned how to spend an 

 inheritance it can never hope to restore. The 

 utmost it can aspire to do is to become the Chan- 

 cellor of Nature's Exchequer, and to control for 

 its own ends the immense reserves of energy which 

 are at present in keeping for great cosmleal 

 schemes (p. 247). 



We may not be inclined to take all this 

 quite literally; thus, civilization is not really 



synonymous with science, even in its modern 

 developments; but it is all very interesting 

 and productive of thought. 

 The MaUng of the Earth. By J. W. 



Gregory. 



Parts of this seem rather uncritically writ- 

 ten. We are astonished to read (p. 127) 

 " the evidence, therefore, of the distribution 

 of animals and plants proves the former exist- 

 ence of continents that have been dismem- 

 bered and of land routes that have foundered 

 beneath the oceans " ; and there is actually a 

 full-page map showing the distribution of the 

 AcrEeidse, a tropical family of butterflies, as 

 part of the important evidence of land routes 

 across the present oceans! On p. 244 it is 

 stated that the first traces of vertebrates are 

 Silurian, whereas it is generally considered 

 that America yields Ordovician fish remains. 

 Anthropology. By E. R. Marett. 



Written in a breezy style, with due regard 

 to the idea that " the ' dry bones ' of history, 

 its statistical averages, and so on, are all very 

 well in their way; but they correspond to the 

 superficial truth that history repeats itself, 

 rather than to the deeper truth that history is 

 an evolution. Anthropology, then, should not 

 disdain what might be termed the method of 

 the historical novel. To study the plot with- 

 out studying the characters will never make 

 sense of the drama of human life" (p. 242). 

 On p. 40 it is implied that the antiquity of 

 the Calaveras skull is still a matter of opinion. 

 Here and there, the flow of rhetoric appears 

 to lead to some looseness of statement, as when 

 it is said that Wallace discovered the law of 

 natural selection " at the same moment " as 

 Darwin, instead of independently, as it should 

 have been. 

 Man. A History of the Human Body. By 



Arthur Keith. 



Very interesting, with a good deal of in- 

 formation which will be new to the average 

 biologist; some of it in fact based on new 

 work by the author. We may perhaps object 

 to the account (p. 171) of Pithecanthropus 

 as " the fossil man of Java," without any 

 expression of doubt regarding its humanity. 



