LITERARY NOTICES. 



557 



of the former pictures of these creatures 

 were highly sensational ; in some of the later 

 ones neither art nor Nature had fair play, 

 and we had to put up with awkward-looking 

 creatures that could not get along at all in 

 life, or with animals in attitudes which later 

 researches have shown were not theirs. 

 Hence our ideas upon these points need to 

 be revised. The discoveries of later years 

 have shown, as Dr. Henry Woodward ob- 

 serves in the preface he furnishes, " that 

 the dicynodon and labyrinthodon, instead 

 of being toadlike in form, were lacertilian 

 or salamander-like reptiles, with elongated 

 bodies and moderately long tails ; that the 

 iguanodon did not usually stand upon 'all 

 fours,' but more frequently sat up like some 

 huge kangaroo with short fore limbs." The 

 discoveries of Marsh, Cope, Leidy, and others 

 in America have added vastly to our knowl- 

 edge of the real structure of these animals. 

 We have now almost complete skeletons and 

 details of the flying membranes of long and 

 short tailed pterodactyles ; the archa2opte- 

 ryx and Marsh's hesperornis and ichthyornis 

 have given more definite shape to our knowl- 

 edge of primitive birds ; and the discovery 

 by Prof. Fraas of the outlines of the skin 

 and fins of ichthyosaurus have established 

 the pertinency of the term fish-lizard as ap- 

 plied to it. These and other discoveries 

 have been applied in the text and illustra- 

 tions of this book ; and we have, according- 

 ly, the saurians of the sea and the land, the 

 real dragons and sea-serpents of old, the 

 monsters of America and of India — mega- 

 theriums, glyptodons, mastodon, mammoth, 

 giant birds, Irish elk, and Steller's sea cow 

 — represented with a clearer approach to ac- 

 curacy than ever before, but still subject to 

 correction by future discoveries. 



Bible Studies. By Henry Ward Beecher. 

 New York: Ford, Howards, & Hulbert. 

 Pp. 438. Price, $1.50. 



This is a volume of lectures on the early 

 Old Testament books which were delivered 

 in Plymouth Church on Sunday evenings in 

 1878— "79, as part of an unrealized design 

 eventually to cover the whole Old Testament 

 with the course. The lectures were taken 

 down by Mr. T. J. Ellinwood, according to his 

 custom of stenographically reporting all Mr. 

 Beecher's public addresses, and are now pub- 



lished under the editorial supervision of Mr. 

 John R. Howard. The whole force of them, 

 Mr. Howard says, " goes to throw off all the 

 cramping theory of ' inspiration ' which makes 

 God responsible for all the evil that was 

 done by the inchoate Hebrew people in his 

 name. Thus the student is left free to fol- 

 low this master expositor in rediscovering 

 and newly appreciating the wisdom, the 

 goodness, the grand foundation-work of 

 Moses under the divine impulse, which both 

 served to build up the Israelitish nation and 

 has entered into many of the soundest ele- 

 ments of modern civilization. . . . The at- 

 tentive reader of these Bible studies will 

 lose no living belief in the ancient Scriptures 

 as containing the word of God to meD, while 

 he will gain new and larger views of their 

 worth for Christian life to-day — and that not 

 in spite of the new philosophy of growth, but 

 in full harmony with its irresistible advance." 

 Of special interest, as bearing upon the sub- 

 ject in its generality, are the first three lec- 

 tures, on The Inspiration of the Bible, How 

 to read the Bible, and The Book of Begin- 

 nings. 



Representative English Literature from 

 Chaucer to Tennyson. Selected and 

 supplemented with Historical Connec- 

 tions and a Map. By Henry S. Pan- 

 coast. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 

 Pp. 514. Price, $1.60. 



The author's attempt has been to write a 

 book which should answer the needs of those 

 who are beginning to teach the subject ac- 

 cording to new methods. The tendency 

 formerly was to study the history of litera- 

 ture without coming into real contact with 

 the literature itself ; now, in our anxiety to 

 avoid this error, we are in danger of rushing 

 into the opposite one, and of studying the 

 literature torn from its living historic and 

 human relations. In the present work the 

 attempt is made to put the student in direct 

 contact with some representative master- 

 pieces, without ignoring the study of litera- 

 ture from its historical side. The sketches 

 and selections are therefore presented in the 

 order of their time by sequence, with a distinct 

 historical thread running through the whole. 

 The authors mentioned and quoted are pre- 

 sented in direct connection with the ages and 

 surroundings in which they lived and wrote. 

 The history and the surroundings are described 



