176 Louis Figuier. [April, 



The Noachian deluge was the result, he conjectures, of "the 

 upheaval of a part of the long chain of mountains, which are a 

 prolongation of the Caucasus. The earth opening by one of the 

 fissures made in its crust in the course of cooling, an eruption of 

 volcanic matter escaped through the enormous crater so produced. 

 Masses of watery vapour or steam accompanied the lava discharged 

 from the interior of the globe, which, being first dissipated in 

 clouds and afterwards condensed, descended in torrents of rain, and 

 the plains were drowned with volcanic mud. The inundation of 

 the plains over an extensive radius was the instantaneous effect of 

 this upheaval, and the formation of the volcanic cone of Ararat, 

 and the vast plateau on which it rests, altogether 17,323 feet above 

 the sea, the permanent result."* 



With this extract we must close our notice of M. Figuier 's 

 'World before the Deluge,' a book which will probably be re- 

 garded in future ages as a fair illustration of the mixed views held 

 by the various thinkers of our days on geological and palseontological 

 questions. 



Every reader will find something to his taste, and the feelings 

 of none will be outraged by too great one-sidedness. There is the 

 plate of the Garden of Eden, with our first parents and Cain, and 

 the Biblical account of the Deluge for those who cling to tradition, 

 whilst there are calm discussions, well-arranged data, and the 

 beautiful illustrations to support a belief in the antiquity of man 

 and his contemporaneity with the great extinct mammifera. Leav- 

 ing M. Figuier to render these views consistent with each other, we 

 pass on to his ' Vegetable World, ' j an exquisite work, which has just 

 been issued as a companion to the ' World before the Deluge/ 



If excellent paper, legible type, beautiful illustrations, and 

 good printing be any recommendation to a book, this work 

 should have an extensive sale. The first part of the volume 

 treats of the structure of the various organs of plants and their 

 functions. Commencing with the root, the various kinds of 

 which are fully described, it passes on to the stem ; the varie- 

 ties, structure, and mode of growth of acrogenous, endogenous, 

 and exogenous stems are clearly explained; buds, boughs, and 

 branches successively engage the reader's attention ; a brief notice 

 of the different modes of grafting is given, and the structure, 

 functions, and different forms of the leaf are described in a pleasing 

 manner. "Leaves," he says,J "transform themselves into other 

 organs with wonderful facility. It is, in feet, by modification of 

 the leaves that nature produces many essential organs in the life 

 of plants." This law of Morphology is often inaccurately stated. 



* P. 418. 



t ' The Vegetable World : being a History of Plants, with their Botanical 

 Descriptions and Peculiar Properties/ 446 Engravings and 24 Full Page Illus- 

 trations, chiefly from Nature. Chapman & Hall, 1867. 



X P. 83. 



