REVIEWS. 



497 



sion of any kind of trash. We do not want to pull Mr. Francis's book alto- 

 gether to j)ieces, for some passages are nicely written ; but we can not stand 

 by to see some thousands of people thirsting for knowledge and drinking in 

 innocence from such an umA'holesome stream. 



We have read the book only half tlirough — we confess it : we could not get 

 any further. To do as much as this even we pulled up several times. We 

 managed to get at the first stage over sixteen pages. When we opened the 

 book we anticipated better things. " I know," it begins, "of few things more 

 pleasant than to ramble for a mile along one of our southern beaches in the 

 early days of autumn. We get the sniff' of the sea-breeze ; we see prismatic 

 colours dappling the water, or curiously reflected from capes of wet sand ; 

 solemn beetling cliffs, broken here and there by a green slope, rise on one side 

 of us ; while on the other, we are enchanted by the wild nuisic of the waves, 

 as they dash noisily upon the shmgle at out feet, and then trickle back with 

 faint lisping murmurs into the azure gulf." 



At the third page, however, we tripped a little over a confusion of " agates," 

 "fossils," "pebbles," and "pebbly-beaches." As we progressed onwards we 

 had sundry little slips over " quartz-;igate" (p. 13), "ribs of a conglomerate" 

 (p. 13), "tubular arms branching out from one central trunk" of a choanite, 

 and many like absurdities. We M'ere fairly taken aghast at page sixteen by 

 the "limestone tubes" and gelatinous substance of the interspace between 

 them attrilnited to that sponge ; tliis gelatinous substance is described as " still 

 retaining that appearance in a medium of semi-pellucid chalcedony," whereas 

 in reality the so-called gelatinous substance was once sponge-tissue, smce lost 

 in the process of mineralization. We read on. " By the side of the choanite 

 is another fossil which we now call an ' alcyonite', the learned name of the 

 nearest living species being 'alcyonium digit at um.' It is weU known in the 

 Isle of Wight as ' dead man's fingers.' " And what, indeed, do these petrified 

 " dead-man's fingers" prove to be ? The wood-cut solves the mystery, the 

 artist has dra^m what he has seen, and the fossil is really the roots of a creta- 

 ceous sponge turned tqmde down ! 



At the next page our author speaks of " a zoophyte not injected as are the 

 choanites, but preserved bodily in gray flint. It is an undoubted ' actinia,' in 

 every respect the same as those pulpy individuals who are displaying their jelly- 

 like bodies and floral hues in many a household aquarium. This creature once 

 floated up and down in shallow marine pools, or clung to banks of ribbon-weed 

 fringing the coast-skerries. At present, himself of stone, he is firmly M'edged 

 in a hollow AAdthin a large pebble, and reminds us of the words of a pretty 

 song — 



* I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls.' " 



We put the book down. We had been brought to a full stop. This was too 

 bad. We need scarcely say the fossil he Avas thus describing was a choanite. 

 No regard is paid to the alliances of the sponges, choanites, and ventriculites 

 at aU. Mr. Touhnin Smith would reject the assertion that the ventriculites 

 must have been creatures lower down in the scale than the choanite, and Dr. 

 ManteD. would have been disgusted to have been told that living ventriculites 

 " resembled in stature and configuration an ordinary toad-stool." Lideed, the 

 name " ventriculite," if the author knew its meaning, might have saved him 

 from such an exposure of his ignorance. Verily he seems to know nothing 

 correct of the nature of the choanite, nor of the other fossils he figures or 

 describes, but to be entirely misled by fanciful similitudes. His " vermicular," 

 fossils, Ms " asterid," his " nondescript," his " myriapod," his " terebratula," 

 are as gross instances of ignorance as anybody with a B.A. after his name could 

 invent. In the " myriapod" of plate v. we have merely a choanite cut through 



