August 14, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



137 



his preface promises that the philosoph}' of 

 religion shall be his next task. How the rela- 

 tion of ethics to faith would be developed b}^ 

 him may be seen in his ver}' remarkable lecture 

 on this subject, delivered in 1881. Here his 

 spirit has its natural flight, unhindered b}' con- 

 trovers}' or by ethical limitations. 



AYe turn, finalh^, from these verjMnsufficient 

 suggestions of the contents of the work to a 

 single element in it which will be novel to most 

 readers, and interesting to all. Dr. Martineau 

 is led in his preface to describe the personal 

 experiences which gave its character to his 

 work, and in so doing he offers us a most fas- 

 cinating and instructive glimpse of his own in- 

 tellectual autobiograph3\ It seems that he 

 was originall}' trained to be a civil engineer,- 

 and his first philosophical studies were con- 

 trolled b}^ scientific conceptions. " So self-evi- 

 dent appeared the maxims of mechanical cau- 

 salit}^, that in my heart I deemed it blindness if 

 an}' one professed a different vision." . . . 

 " It is no wonder, that, in skimming over m}^ 

 notes of work in those distant years, I seem to 

 be communing with some tight-swathed, logi- 

 cal prig, in whose jerk}' confidence and angu- 

 lar mimicry I am humbled to recognize the 

 image of myself." It was the discipline of 

 teaching these subjects which changed his 

 views ; yet the change was not so obvious to 

 himself as it was to his friend, J. S. Mill. 

 '• Though he saw to the bottom of my apostasy, 

 he did not cut me off as a lost soul." Finally, 

 under the guidance of Professor Trendelen- 

 burg and the inspiration of Greek philosophy, 

 he gained what he describes as a ' new intel- 

 lectual birth.' " It was as if the stereoscope 

 through which I had looked at Plato or Aris- 

 totle had had its double picture, — Greek and 

 English, — with distorted halves, producing 

 only a blurred and overlapping flat ; while now 

 the slide of true correspondence was there, 

 and the eye, after a momentary strain of adap- 

 tation, beheld the symmetrical reality in all its 

 dimensions." . . . "The metaphysic of the 

 world had come home to me ; and never again 

 could I say that phenomena, in their clusters 

 and chains, were all." To many a student there 

 will be nothing of more value in these volumes 

 than these suggestions of what the author calls 

 '• the transitions of his thought, and the testing 

 crises of his life." Francis G. Peabody. 



WORK OF THE CHALLENGER EXPEDI- 

 TION— IIL GEOLOGICALLY VIEWED, 



That the work of a dredging and sounding 

 expedition should add much to our knowledge 



of the geology of dry land, except by inferences 

 from submarine formations, is hardly to be 

 expected. Nevertheless, this report contains 

 many facts and observations useful to geolo- 

 gists. Several of the phototype plates are 

 extremely striking illustrations of geological 

 phenomena, showing more on one sheet than 

 many pages of text would do. Such, for in- 

 stance, are the plates illustrating glacial mark- 

 ings in Nova Scotia (i. p. 158), the trap-hills 

 of Kerguelen (p. 338), and the wonderful lava 

 cascade of Kilauea. 



Only two of the series of special reports, 

 actual and projected, treat of essentially geo- 

 logical matters ; one already printed being on 

 the petrology of St. Paul's Pocks, by Prof. A. 

 Renard. These rocks, far removed from any 

 continent, consist of a number of small islets 

 separated by deep chasms, through which the 

 ocean unceasingly pours and rises into break- 

 ers. The rock-mass, according to Professor 

 Renard, is peridotic ; and, while admitting the 

 possibility of the volcanic origin favored by 

 analogy, he has been led, rather, to presume 

 that the rocks are a remnant of upheaval of 

 an orographic character. This view has been 

 opposed by Professor Geikie, and in this jour- 

 nal by Mr. Wadsworth {Science,, i. 1883, p. 

 590), and would seem yet unestablished. 



The second report referred to is that of Dr. 

 Murray, on the deposits of the deep-sea bed. 

 One of the most attractive plates in the work 

 before us is that (p. 926) illustrating the ooze 

 formed by the diatoms, radiolarians, forami- 

 nifera, and other organic remains on the sea- 

 bottom, as seen under high magnification. 

 After the removal of the calcareous portions, 

 and the determination of the carbonic acid, 

 the remainder is divided by Dr. Murray into 

 mineral matter, the debris of siliceous organ- 

 isms, and fine sediment. The material found 

 in inland seas and along continental shores 

 consists in large part of terrigenous deposits, 

 the different colored muds and sand, and vol- 

 canic debris „pf inorganic origin ; while corals 

 and corallines afford sand and mud of organic 

 origin. The abyssal deposits, on the other 

 hand, in large part, seem to consist of ooze 

 derived from remains of minute animals, such 

 as pteropods, diatoms, etc., and especially of 

 a red clay such as results from the degradation 

 of the ooze and of decomposed pumice. The 

 transition between the former and the latter is 

 gradual, but in the great deeps the clay almost 

 exclusively predominates. The terrigenous 

 deposits reveal the equivalents of chalks, green 

 sands, marls, or shales, but in the deep-sea 

 deposits, according to Dr. Murray, differ pro- 



