224 Reviews — LeifchiWs Higher Ministry of Nature. 



Natural History in the University of Christiania, by whom it was 

 described in the year 1868. It is obviously a form of the Apio- 

 crinidce still more degraded than Bourgueticrinus, which it closely 

 resembles." (p. 447.} 



We must now close this very brief notice of Prof. Wy ville Thomson's 

 beautiful book, so full of interest for the Naturalist, and so rich in 

 palEeontological materials, to which we may again be drawn to allude 

 in a future number. 



The book gives us the best and fullest notion we have yet had 

 laid before us of the vast benefit conferred on science by the wise 

 action of the Council of the Eoyal Society, in pressing the importance 

 of such work upon the Government, so that they have gone on from 

 the smaller cruises of the "Porcupine" and "Lightning," to the 

 grander idea of despatching "an expedition to traverse the great 

 ocean basins, and take an outline survey of the vast new field of 

 research — the bottom of the sea." Speed, speed, the " Challenger ! " 

 and success to all on board ! 



II. — The Higher Ministry or Nature viewed in the Light of 

 Modern Science, etc. By John E. Leifchild, A.M. 8vo. pp. 

 543. (London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1872.) 



IF the author of the book before us admits that he deals in many 

 portions "with inevitable and insuperable difficulties," touching 

 " upon the extreme limits of human intelligence, where no thinker 

 can hope for clear solution, in the present state of our knowledge," 

 it is easily to be conceived that the reviewer finds his task far from 

 light. 



" This world of ours," writes the author, in his Eecapitulation, 

 "and the universe so far as we know it, forms a magnificent manifest- 

 ation to man, and perhaps to higher beings, of the creating and 

 conserving Deity, without whose creation and conservation in 

 perpetual exercise, the totality of existing things, organic and 

 inorganic, which we call Nature, would not have- come into, and 

 would not continue, in existence. 



"Every relation, or law, or method, we discern and discover in 

 Nature, and in ourselves, is an already accepted, or an additional 

 proof of this fundamental position. The advances and adjustments 

 of scientific research, all, when rightly interpreted, contribute to 

 strengthen and enlarge this view." (p. 539.) 



Much of Mr. Leifchild's book is necessarily occupied with matter 

 beyond the limits of this Journal to discuss. We may therefore pass 

 over many chapters — nay, must of necessity do so in a brief review — 

 chapters entitled "The Fleeting and the Enduring" — "The Two 

 Ministries of Nature" — "Ignorance, Definitions," etc.— " Theologies 

 and Natural Science " — " The Great Problem and our Means of Solving 

 it" — "The Argument from Design." 



Under this last chapter-heading we notice in passing the good 

 sense of the author in deprecating the popular defect of treating 

 certain' phenomena, certain structures or provisions, as specially 



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