374 Notices of Boohs. [July, 



liable to considerable and irregular expansion, thus vitiating the 

 most careful observations and corrections. The Report on this 

 subject is most interesting, and is accompanied by plates showing 

 the different variations. It is a striking example of careful 

 observation and tabulation of facts leading directly to the discovery 

 of the cause of the disturbance. 



Mr. Day, besides his successful onslaught on Sir Henry James, 

 gives an account of the various attempts to measure the Pyramid, 

 and shows why the results of the French savans and of Colonel 

 Howard Vyse were, until the last few years, the only ones on 

 which reliance could be placed. In a paper printed at the end 

 of his book, but written previously, Mr. Day attacks " the ' de- 

 velopment ' band of Darwins, Crawfurds. Lubbocks, et hoc genus 

 omne " with language which is somewhat stronger than his 

 arguments. It seems strange that people cannot carry on investi- 

 gation in their own line without branching off into topics with 

 which the one in hand has no clear connection. 



The plates in Mr. Day's other work are most elaborately and 

 carefully engraved, and no doubt will be exceedingly useful to 

 those for whom they are intended, viz., those who are already 

 tolerably well acquainted with the literature of the subject ; and 

 we agree with the author's opinion that the volume will be of 

 little use " to those uninitiated in the peculiarities of that class 

 of ancient structures which are in most cases erroneously called 

 ' pyramids.' " For four of the fifteen plates we are indebted to 

 Professor Piazzi Smyth, from whom the world has received an 

 example rarely equalled of a devotion of extraordinary powers 

 to the drudgery of scientific verification. Whilst theories of 

 such momentous importance are in the balance, every contribution 

 towards arriving at well-founded conclusions must be hailed with 

 gratitude, and we cannot but thank those two writers for clearing 

 away some of the difficulties in this remarkable investigation. 



The Natural History of Commerce, with a copious list of Com- 

 mercial Terms and their Synonyms in several languages. 

 By John Yeats, LL.D., &c, assisted by several scientific 

 gentlemen. London : Cassell, Petter, and Galpin. 



Much has been written and done in regard to the education of 

 the poor — the Education Bill, like most Acts of Parliament, 

 following upon greater activity outside the walls of the Legis- 

 lature, merely supplements what it appears to have created. 

 Much, also, has been done for the education of the rich, as is 

 testified by deep and radical changes in our Universities, our 

 Public Schools, and our Grammar Schools. At both ends of the 

 scale of society endowments more or less permanent assist the 

 work that parents themselves do not value sufficiently to pay for 

 at the current market rate. But in the meantime the middle 



