March 6, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



137 



children. I would not say that all these existed in Oregon and 

 Washington in prehistoric times, nor that the Indian artist had 

 travelled around the world, but that all these things had come to 

 him. 



We have an excellent bust of Mr. Cleveland made by an Indian 

 from a scrap of Harper's Weekly, which one of our collectors had 

 wrapped around a bundle. It is not at all unlikely that the por- 

 traits of Mr. Crowley had found their way to Oregon in the same 

 manner. It was a very popular subject about the time of his 

 death, and the papers were full of him. 



However, I am very far from depreciating the specimens on 

 that account. The manner in which the lines of our culture move 

 forward into savage culture is the most important inquu-y in the 

 history of civilization. O. T. Mason. 



U. S. National Museum, Feb. 28. 



BOQK-BEVIEWS. 



Mineral Physiology and Physiography. By T. Sterey Hunt. 3d 



ed. New York, Scientific Publ. Co. 8". $5. 



A New Basis for Chemistry ; A Chemical Philosophy. By T. 



Steeet Hunt. 3d ed. New York, Scientific Publ. Co. 18°. 



$3. * 



Chemical and Geological Essays. By T. Steeey Hunt. 3d ed. 



New York. Scientific Publ. Co. 8°. $3.50. 

 Systematic Mineralogy, based on a Natural Classification. By T. 

 Sterey Hunt. New York, Scientific Publ. Co. (In press.) 

 The new and revised edition of the works of the veteran scien- 

 tist. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, calls for renewed attention to the great 

 world problems to which he has devoted a long and studious life. 

 Those problems have arisen in the attempts of science to ascertain 

 the ultimate, or at least a truer, conception of matter, and to ob- 

 tain some theory of the formation of the chemical elements, and 

 then of their combination and order in the formation of the sun, 

 solar system, and especially of our earth. Dr. Hunt, at the close 

 of his " Physiography," calls it " mineralogical evolution," and 

 from it he proposes a new mineralogical classification and nomen- 

 clature, and finally " A New Basis for Chemistry." 



Those who are not acquainted with the scientific career of the 

 author may at first suppose that an attempt of this adventurous 

 kind belongs to sensational and pseudo-scientific romancing ex- 

 cited by presumption, sentiment, ignorance, and imagination. 

 Far other is the result of a careful examination of these volumes. 

 We find in tbein a patient, mature, and thoroughly trained physi- 

 cist, drawing to a conclusion, which he verily believes to be 

 triumphant, the scientific evidence by which he has worked oilt 

 not only this dream of his own youth, but the dream of the youth 

 of Science herself : for the first question Science had to propose in 

 early Greece, and the last she may have to solve, is the nature of 

 matter and its changes. Her work is all there. How far the 

 solution has progressed is disclosed in an exceedingly instructive 

 history of previous efforts in that regard, made introductory to 

 his own, in Dr. Hunt's main work, "Mineral Physiology and 

 Physiography." This work should be the first taken in hand by 

 the student, and then the "New Basis of Chemistry," and lastly, 

 and byway of greater illustration, " The Essays " and " Systemat- 

 ic Mineralogy." This suggestion may save some disappointment, 

 for Dr. Hunt has little mercy for those not acquainted with scien- 

 tific methods and terminology. But when taken in the right 

 order, as above indicated, this difficulty gradually disappears. 

 The interest in the subject, than which none can be more sublime 

 or important, fully repays the labor required to master its techni- 

 calities. 



There are few scientists who are competent to give opinions of 

 weight upon these fundamental questions, but none can be indif- 

 ferent to them. To compare these great matters with small, we 

 may say that Dr. Hunt has attempted to do for the mighty uni- 

 verse of inorganic matter what Darwin and the modern biologists 

 have done for the little organic world of protoplasm. It is singu- 

 lar that we have been led to chiefly think this little organic vcorld 

 to be complex and inexplicable when compared with physics 

 and chemistry; but the fact seems to be that during this cen- 



tury the organic world has been pretty well made out. Given 

 protoplasm as found in nature, and the laws of growth and environ- 

 ment, and evolution tells the rest of the organic story ^except to 

 people who seeru to have some reason for not wishing to have the 

 "mystery" solved. So much having been accomplished as to 

 organized matter. Dr. Hunt's works bring forward anew the very 

 timely question, " Is there also one universal substance which, in 

 its knowable changes and combinations, can give us the solution 

 of the vast material world?" The conti'ast with the organized 

 matter may be used only to state the question ; for their methods 

 must be quite disparate, and should never be confounded. Dr. 

 Hunt answers this question affirmatively. He begins with the 

 hypothesis of Newton and his successors, that the universe as far 

 as known is a plenum of ether, and from the properties of light, 

 heat, electricity, chemical affinity, etc., infers its reality. From 

 astronomical and spectroscopic data he infers that the nebulaa 

 from whence sun systems result are ethereal condensations. 

 " Thus, perhaps," says Newton, " all things may be originated 

 from ether; " and we are gradually brought to see this hypothesis 

 gather the strength of a true theory under the light of the latest 

 discoveries. 



The author carefully lays away the atomic theory as unscien- 

 tific, and the source of the principal misunderstandings of nature. 

 The counter theory of the ultimate continuity of matter is then 

 brought forward as the basis of the new philosophy by which 

 only the ether theory of Newton (contrary to his own view) can 

 be sustained. We then are taught that ' ' all chemical union is 

 nothing else than solution : " the uniting species or forms of mat- 

 ter are simply dissolved in each other. Chemical union is the 

 identification of the combining bodies in volume and character in 

 the new species formed. The type of the chemical process is 

 found in solution, from which it is possible, under changed physi- 

 cal conditions, to regenerate the original species. All of these "may 

 be supposed to be formed from a single element, or materia prima, 

 by the chemical process." The "New Basis for Chemistry" 

 (pp. 16-33, 35-37, et passim) elaborates this view. In the third 

 chapter we are introduced to the materia prima, from which, by 

 a process of cooling and electric changes, the chemical elements 

 result by a process of " successive polymerization." Matter in its 

 simple form, which must be far beyond the tenuity of hydrogen, 

 can only be looked for by the spectroscope under the inconceivable 

 heat of the grander suns. The author evidently believes that the 

 later observations indicate forms of a primal matter, which, under 

 heat and electrical changes beyond our present intelligence, po- 

 lymerizes, and appears to us first as chemical elements, and hence 

 as gases, and thence, as polymers of gases arise, under decreasing 

 heat, as liquids, colloids, and solids. 



From this vantage-ground the author has the basis of a new law 

 of numbers, weights, volumes, densities, etc, — in a word, a new 

 chemistry. By its light the combinations of matter are reviewed 

 from the experiments of the laboratory to the mighty changes of 

 stellar nebulge. The stratified "rock-ribbed " bones of our planet 

 are accounted for by an order determined by the nature of the 

 materials, their chemical union, and modes of condensation. 



The author takes unmeasured pains to work mineralogy and 

 geology into orderly sciences by showing how the granitic rocks 

 were chemically formed, and then forced to the surface and into 

 the sohd forms in which they now appear by " crenitic " or spring- 

 like action. Thus we have a rational, uniform, chemical, account 

 of our sun's and of our earth's formation and history. The chaotic 

 appearances on the earth's surface are not evidences of catastro- 

 phes, but the results of the condensation of matter, and the crenitic 

 and other re arrangements which that process necessarily com- 

 pelled. Thus we are made to conceive of ethereal, gaseous, liquid, 

 colloid, and soUd matter as one infinite polymeric world-forming, 

 never-ending drama. 



In order to realize this vastly improved science of matter, our 

 author shows that much of the scaffolding which has served well in 

 the past building of such a science now really prevents its comple- 

 tion. He especially shows that the atomic hypothesis, the present 

 chemical notation, and classification, and the treatment of miner- 

 alogy, are not true, or but partly so, and should be replaced by 

 the completed theory of matter and its polymeric changes and 



