854 REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
plants are sound. The author insists upon the extreme antiquity 
of the continents and the fact that the present ocean beds have 
always been such. 
The main drawback in the book is the almost entire absence of 
illustrations, of which there are not a dozen. The reader, however, 
is constantly referred to a map. While an excellent book for the 
British student, the American reader will labor under the disad- y 
vantage of reference to the local geology of Scotland and England, 
to the exclusion of the broader views to be derived from a study 
of the physical geology of his own continent. Compared with the 
physical geography of our own Guyot, we miss the elegant diction 
and broad generalizations of the leading physical geographer of 
his time. The American “ Physical Geography” with its beautiful 
illustration and maps; which appeal so forcibly to the eye, is a 
much more valuable aid to the naturalist. -Young’s, however, is 
an excellent book to read in connection with Guyot. 
Harr Hours wirn rae Microscorr.*—The issue of “ Putnam’s 
Popular Manuals” has furnished us a new edition of this best of 
books for beginners who take up the microscope as a recreation 
or as a means of studying general natural history. The new 
edition includes all the advantages of the first. Something be 
tween a catalogue of objects and a treatise upon them, it groups 
_ together, in a manner both convenient and sufficiently natural, & 
large number of fascinating microscopic views. The clear and 
numerous illustrations by Tuffen West, which are rather construc 
tions of the objects than drawings of any one possible view of them, 
are not on that account imaginary and faulty as has been claimed, 
but all the better adapted to their purpose, 
With the exception of the considerably and judiciously enlarged 
introductory chapter on the structure of the microscope by the 
author, in which the binocular receives such unqualified approval 
as it deserves and receives from those who use it for similar work; 
and a good half-hour, by F. Kitton, with polarized light illustrated 
by a bright chromo-lithograph, this edition is not much modernized 
nor is it much the worse for remaining as it was originally con- 
structed. 
*Half Hours with the 
Microscope; being a popular guide to the use of re 
‘Scope as a means of amusement and instruction. By Edwin Lankester, M. D- 
“ated from nature, by Tuffen West. New York: G. P, Putnam’s sons, 1874. 
hg 
