EEYIEWS. 



37 



hofeu." By L. Agassiz. "On the Geographical Distribution of the Sea-Urchin of 

 Massachusetts Bay " {Echinus granulans). By A. Agassiz. " Cast of Megatherium set 

 up at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, U.S." By L. Agassiz. " Zircon, 

 Corundum, and other Minerals from Greenwood, Me." By A. E. Verrill. " Copper- 

 bearing Belt of Canada East ;" and " On the Magnesian Limestone X)f the Lower Silurian 

 series of Prairie du Chien containing Crinoids and Fossil Shells." By C. T. Jackson. 



EEVIEWS. 



The School Manual of Geology. 



By J. Beete Jukes, M.A., F.B.S., Local Director of the Geological Survey 

 of Ireland. Edinburgh : A. and C. Black. 1863. 



If we think it beneath the dignity of Mr. Jukes's position to write school 

 manuals, and regret the time spent on such trivial labours by a man so 

 capable of better work, it is because, having attained to his present rank, 

 and to the command of such powerful resources as fall within the grasp of 

 a director of an extensive portion of the British Islands, we had hoped to 

 see his whole time occupied in working out the material at his command, 

 in a manner alike redounding to his own fame and to the advance of 

 science. We have made the like comments on the popular books of other 

 eminent Government servants, and therefore these are not meant as per- 

 sonally unkind towards Mr. Jukes ; indeed, we are quite willing to admit 

 that the book before us is a very nice one, and far more sensible than we 

 anticipated from the title or from the preface when we read in it that " this 

 little book is intended for the use of young persons of fourteen or fifteen 

 years of age." The preface, however, further informs that " it is also offered 

 to grown-up persons who have no time for a more extended study of the 

 science, with the hope that they may gain from it a fair general .notion of 

 the scope and nature of that science." The chief difficulty, Mr. Jukes 

 fancies, "the learner meets with in the study of geology, is the want of 

 elemental knowledge of the collateral sciences of physics, chemistry, 

 mineralogy, zoology, and botany," and he thinks, if these sciences were 

 made part of our ordinary education, as they ought to be, it would be easy 

 to teach their application to geology. We do not agree with him. The 

 first great impediment to the propagation of geology is the want of logic 

 and want of certainty of many of its principles ; it has not the same cer- 

 tainty of conclusion as mathematics, it has not the self-evidence of experi- 

 ments in chemistry, it possesses neither analysis nor synthesis, and it wants 

 the efforts of our best men to give its tottering framework solidity. The 

 older workers have thrown in such a lot of rubble, and although geologists 

 have laboured much, it has been isolatedly and independently, every man 

 casting his stone on the rising walls as a passer-by would on a Scotch 

 cairn, until the edifice has risen to lofty height, but without sufficient ad- 

 hesion. There is material enough for the rough work of the cyclopeau 

 building, but it is as rude as the unhewn-stone forts of ancient North- 

 umberland, and the cement and the facing-stones are wanted to complete 

 its strength and the fineness of its finish. There are other difficulties 

 barring the general study of geology, time and money, — time to examine 

 over extensive territories, money to defraj' the expenses of travel and of 

 collecting. Local geologists working out special areas and subjects may be 



