366 BE VIEWS — MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



powers considerably below the average, may compare advantageously 

 in cerebral capacity with some Milton or Newton. 



The Catalogue of Crania, as now edited by the intelligent librarian 

 of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is. extensively 

 illustrated with wood-cuts, executed for the various works to which it 

 supplies an important supplement. In some respects it is expressly set 

 forth in emendation of measurements and other data furnished in the 

 Crania Americana; and for all facts in relation to the important 

 cranial collection which supplied the materials for that great work, it 

 is — as the latest authority, embodying the final corrections of its 

 author, as well as the careful additions of the editor of this catalogue, 

 — indispensable to the American ethnologist. The rapid progress 

 which the Philadelphian collection of human crania is now making is 

 shewn by the very discrepancies between the earlier and later sheets of 

 the catalogue. On page 50 an addition of seven Esquimaux and two 

 Loo Chooan skulls is recorded, the gift of Dr. B. Vreeland, U.S.N., who 

 procured the former at Godhavn, Disco Island, on the coast of Greenland. 

 Again, on page 102, the skull of an idiotic negress, of remarkable 

 character, is noted as a still later addition ; and the whole collection, 

 at the date of the final correction of the catalogue, during the present 

 summer, embraces a total of 1,045 human skulls, including specimens 

 from so many localities, and selected with reference to such remark- 

 able peculiarities of site, form, mode of sepulture, and the like, as to 

 constitute it one of the most interesting and valuable series of ethno- 

 graphic materials for study either in the New or the Old World. 



D. W. 



Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science. The Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica. Eighth edition. Dissertation Sixth : exhibiting a gen- 

 eral view of the progress of Mathematics and Physical Science, prin- 

 cipally from 1775 to 1850. By James David Forbes, D.C.L., F.R.S., 

 Sec. R. S. E., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University 

 of Edinburgh, and Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. 

 Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1856. 



There are few undertakings which involve more formidable difficult- 

 ies and require higher intellectual qualifications than the attempt to 

 present, in a manner at once popularly intelligible and scientifically ex- 

 act, the history of the progress of philosophy through any epoch. 



