Feb. 17, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEV\AS. 



159 



Our Earth and its Story. Edited by R. Brown, Ph.D., etc- 

 London : Cassell and Co., 1887. 



There is room even in these days for a popular treatise 

 on Physical Geography, and a book like the one before 

 us, brave in all the wealth of its 376 pages, its twelve 

 coloured plates and maps, and 200 woodcuts, may well 

 claim a place in the library of those who lack time, 

 energy, or inclination to wrestle with the many text- 

 books from which it draws it stores of information. 



To tell the truth, we opened Dr. Brown's book with an 

 old dislike of knowledge made easy, blinding us to its 

 outward graces ; we close it with a feeling that for once 

 knowledge has been made easy without being made at 

 the same time misleadingly superficial, and with a con- 

 viction that its influence will go towards forming inquirers 

 and students rather than scientific dilettanti and prigs. 



Sound, Light, and Heat. By Mark R. Wright. Long- 

 mans' Elementary Science Manuals. (London : 

 Longmans, Green, and Co. 1887.) 

 As a guide for the beginner it would be hard to find 

 a better book than the one before us. The subjects are 

 treated experimentally, and the illustrative experiments 

 are well-chosen, simple, and do not require elaborate 

 apparatus ; indeed the apparatus suggested not unfre- 

 quently reminds us of Faraday's, for he, with the aid of 

 a few test-tubes and corks, and some tubing, did work 

 which still puts to shame that carried out in many an 

 expensive laboratory. A student who goes carefully 

 through the experiments given in Mr. Wright's book will 

 find himself at the end of it in possession of a solid 

 foundation of the best kind of knowledge — that derived 

 from actual personal experience — and upon it he may 

 safely build as far as his powers and opportunities permit. 

 Even if he builds no further, he will always have a 

 firmer grasp of facts and be better able to appreciate 

 inductive reasoning, for having submitted himself to such 

 a discipline of experiment. 



The Coninionhealth. A Series of Essays on Health and 

 Felicity for Every-day Readers. By Benjamin Ward 

 Richardson, M.D., F.R.S. London : Longmans, Green 

 and Co. 



" Health and felicity ? " Blossoms withering in the 

 smoky breath of modern " Industrialism ? " We fear so. 

 But by what pure dew or what sunlight are they to be 

 revived ? Our author points out ably and eloquently 

 many shameful evils, many points in which, despite all 

 sanitary reforms, men and women fall immeasurably 

 short of the normal type of their nature. He asks, 

 " Where is there a healthy child ? " Recognising that 

 "our children under five years are expected to die in 

 what may almost be called a definite proportion," he 

 declares that "for this we have no shame." But where 

 is the practicable remedy ? 



It may sound cynical to say that room and nutriment 

 throughout nature are found for existing plants and 

 animals merely by the premature death of a large pro- 

 portion of the individuals produced. We speak with too 

 much truth of the ''unemployed." But what would be 

 their numbers if every child born should live on to the 

 age of three-score and ten ? 



Yet there is a remedy, one which we have in our 

 humble way proclaimed for years, and which we are glad 

 to find insisted upon by Dr. Richardson, with more 



eloquence and more authority. It is not what is called 

 Malthusianism. It is expressed by our author in these 

 words : — " Let hereditary health be once recognised as an 

 elernent — we would add a necessary element — of the 

 marriage contract, and the health and life of the nation 

 will receive a lease that shall double the value of the one 

 and the duration of the other." The ancient laws of the 

 Buddhists, we learn, decreed that if man or woman had 

 unwittingly married into a family tainted with scrofula, 

 consumption, or other hereditary disease, he or she might 

 sue out a divorce. There are certainly passages in this 

 essay on the " Seed-Time of Health " with which we do 

 not feel able to agree. For all this we would advise our 

 readers to study it thoughtfully. It will be better for 

 them. 



In the chapter on " Health and Recreation," he points 

 out the necessity of removing "the idea of the distinction of 

 labour and pleasure, the morbid notion that some must 

 work and some must play that the world may make its 

 round." He might here have remarked that " labour," 

 "industry," so much extolled in these days, are too often 

 mere euphemisms for greed, just as among our savage 

 forefathers cruelty and rapine were veiled under the 

 names of courage and patriotism. 



Dr. Richardson's view of recreations reminds us of the 

 paradoxical but truthful saying of Sir G. C. Lewis, that 

 " life would be tolerable but for its amusements." Very 

 wisely does our author, starting from pure physio' ogical 

 considerations, reject as recreations " all games in which 

 what are called stakes are played " — " I know of little that 

 has been a worse physical scourge to the human race 

 than this system of using recreation for the purpose of 

 winning or losing . . . Health and chance are in- 

 compatibles." If we are asked why, we should reply, 

 "because chance involves anxiety, and anxiety is, perhaps, 

 the most deadly form of dissipation." 



From considering these disastrous effects of anxiety we- 

 pass naturally to the greatest cause of anxiety in boys 

 and young men, competitive examination. Here we 

 must let Dr. Richardson speak for himself: "To the 

 errors which are thus cultivated by the crush of education 

 in early life, and which breed a dislike for education in 

 after-life, there is added, in our modern systems, another 

 error, that of making learning, which should be quiet as 

 a murmuring stream, competitively furious. I confess I 

 stand daily appalled at the injury to mental and physical life 

 which I see being perpetrated by competition in the name 

 of learning. Thirty years ago matters were getting bad, 

 now they are getting hopeless. At that time one sex at 

 all events was safe from the insanity. Women were 

 saved from the competitive mental strain, so that the 

 progenies that were to come were born with promises. 

 of safety, on the maternal side at least, from mental 

 degeneration. Now, however, women are racing with 

 men in strife to find out who shall first become mentally 

 enfeebled and crippled first. ... At this time we find a 

 great many men still writing useful books, making dis- 

 coveries in science, and, in a word, keeping alight the 

 intellectual fire. Who are these men ? We read their 

 lives and find that they are, I had almost said without 

 exception, men who in their early career had been under 

 no competitive pressure. Who are to follow these ? In 

 the upper and middle classes dearth cannot but remain 

 while the current method of encouraging mental death by 

 competitive strife is the fashionable proceeding. I can 

 find numbers of men who, having been born with good 

 natural parts, have been turned into imbeciles by severe 



