462 
to increase its cogency. It is probably the 
only instance of a theory which has sprung 
from its author’s brain fully grown, and armed 
at every point against its opponents; and it is 
in remarkable contrast to that great engine of 
mathematics which was invented by such men 
as Newton and Leibnitz, and which, neverthe- 
less, has waited until comparatively recent 
times to be placed upon a thoroughly sound 
basis. 
It is seldom that the press of any country 
brings out so poor an example of book-making 
as ‘ Darwin und seine lehre.’ Its ostensible 
reason for existence is some recent action of 
the Prussian Diet; but the Prussian delegate 
must be a curious man, if he can shape his po- 
litical course from any information which this 
book contains. ‘There is no connection be- 
tween the successive ‘ aphorisms,’ and there 
is no reference to the volume or page from 
which they are taken. The extreme irksome- 
ness of reading elegant extracts on any sub- 
ject is naturally greatly intensified when the 
subject is one which depends for its interest on 
the cumulative nature of the evidence brought 
to bear upon it. One is surprised to find how 
Platonic an air sentences of Darwin’s may have 
when separated from their context. No one 
would have believed that he has uttered so 
many fine sentiments. A selection from this 
selection would make a very respectable Darwin 
birthday-book. The extracts from predecessors 
and contemporaries, instead of making it plain 
just what had been said in the direction of 
Darwinism before Darwin’s time, are also to- 
tally without any order or connection. 
consist in such passages as these, — ‘‘ Man is 
the great dash (gedankenstrich) in the book of 
nature ’’ (Jean Paul); ‘*‘ Every being is as 
happy as it feels itself, not as I, with my intel- 
ligence, would feel in its place’’ (Hartmann) ; 
‘¢ Man was developed, not created ’’ (Oken) ; 
‘¢ We who exists not, feels no kind of pain; 
annihilation, therefore, isnot anevil’’ (ichte) , 
— together with others somewhat more to the 
point, chiefly from Haeckel and Biichner. 
HOUZEAU AND LANCASTER’S METEOR- 
OLOGY. 
Traité élémentaire de météorologie. Par J. C. Hov- 
zEAU and A. LANCASTER. 2e ed. Mons, Man- 
ceauz, 1883. 324p., illustr. 24°. 
Tue Bibliotheque belge for popularizing the 
sciences and arts includes this small volume 
as its second number. The authors have not 
succeeded in making it a very notable book, 
for it has about all the faults common to the 
SCIENCE. 
They . 
[Vor. IIL, No. 62 
many works of its class. It is essentially old- 
fashioned, except in the chapters on weather- 
services, which have a more modern flavor, 
although not of the best. Valuable space is 
given to the description of such instruments as 
the thermometer and barometer, which must 
already be familiar to a reader who has studied 
physics enough to appreciate the mention of 
expansion, radiation, and many other terms 
that receive no special explanation. The en- 
cyclopedic method is attempted: there seems 
to be a desire to say something of every thing, 
and consequently all mention of the bora, 
mistral, fohn, sirocco, solano, and norther is 
crowded into seven lines. It is a great mis- 
take to suppose that the readers of popular 
scientific books will be content with such un- 
satisfying statements. The foéhn may be a 
‘dry and warm wind,’ but why is it so? The 
explanation involves some of the most recent. 
and important applications of physics to me- 
teorology, and a deliberate description of it 
would well replace the chapter on terrestial 
magnetism. But besides these errors, as they 
seem to us, in the plan of the book, there are 
implicit and explicit errors of fact. The low 
temperature of winter is regarded as the effect 
of the greater thickness of atmosphere through 
which the solar rays then pass, and no men- 
tion is made of their oblique incidence on the 
ground. ‘The old error of two northern poles 
of minimum annual temperature is repeated. 
The less area of ice in the arctic than in 
the antarctic seas ‘‘ must be attributed to the 
neighborhood of great continents which extend 
to the equator, and which transmit from point | 
to point the heat thrown on the tropics.”’ 
The maximum density of sea-water is given as 
4° C. The equatorial current of the Indian 
Ocean is described as passing round the Cape 
of Good Hope, up and across the Atlantic 
Ocean, through the Gulf of Mexico, and thence 
as the Gulf Stream to Norway, without a word 
about the many branches on the way. Cloud- 
particles are considered chiefly vesicular ; and 
their suspension in the air is said, before all, 
to be due to their electricity, which repels them 
far from the ground. ‘The oblique motion of 
the trade-winds is wrongly explained, as usual, 
and part of their velocity is incorrectly regard- 
ed as an effect of the earth’s rotation: they 
would flow faster if the earth stood still. The 
strength of storms is represented to be the 
simple direct action of the low pressure at their 
centre. ‘Cyclone’ is applied only to the Indian 
Ocean, and is said to be synonymous with ‘ tor- 
nado’ in the United States. We cannot recom- 
mend the book. | 
