372 Notices of Scientific Works. [July, 



intelligence of their condition has been ages in speeding through 

 space. The application of this fact to the appearance of nebulae 

 and what may be considered as worlds in course of formation, is not 

 dwelt upon sufficiently ; for just as we see the formed suns as they 

 existed in past aeons, so do we now observe the condition of nebulous 

 masses as they formerly existed. Here, again, a little palaeontology 

 and archaeology would have done the author no harm. Just as the 

 Almighty has left us fossils in our terrestrial strata, flints in our 

 burial mounds, and inscriptions upon our tombs to instruct us in 

 the past history of the earth and its inhabitants, so He unfolds to 

 us — not as with His all-seeing and omniscient faculties, but through 

 the very imperfection of our senses, through our inability to leave 

 the surface of our little earth, and the consequent necessity that we 

 should stay here and await the intelligence of the past, — so, we say, 

 he shows us the whole history of the universe at one glance, re- 

 vealing to us to-day stages of formation and progress which existed 

 at periods long past, in a ratio of time measurable by the space 

 through which the message-bearing ray has had to pass in its 

 mission of knowledge. In other words, as soon as our instruments 

 enable us to measure the distance from us of a fixed star or nebula, 

 and show us its condition, we are able to compute at what period 

 of the past, reckoning backwards from to-day, the object we are 

 viewing was actually in that condition, and we have therefore a 

 more precise method of ascertaining the time which has been requisite 

 to bring about cosmical changes than we at present possess for 

 determining the periods required for the dej)osition of terrestrial 

 strata. 



As to Mr. Proctor's views on " Supervision and Controul," they 

 are as suggestive as all his other chapters, but they are not likely 

 to gain much favour, from the author's timidity in expressing his 

 views on controverted subjects. It is not difficult to guess what 

 these are ; but when a writer says he will give us an insight into 

 the nature and operations of the Almighty, but he sees no advantage 

 in making people uncomfortable by saying what he himself thinks 

 on just those matters on which he is best able to form a judgment, 

 his views of Divine action are not likely to be much heeded either by 

 " believers " or " unbelievers." The book has other faults. It is of too 

 mixed a character, treating in some places (as where the principles 

 of the spectroscope are explained) of physical phenomena in terms 

 suited for a schoolboy, and in others discussing controverted points 

 in astronomy with the earnestness and particularity of an experienced 

 disputant, and not always without the suspicion of some little un- 

 philosophical animus. 



No one will accuse us, after these criticisms, of having followed 

 the too common but ignoble practice of handling tenderly, if not of 

 flattering, the productions of a collaborateur, but we are bound to 



