RBVIEWS. 
497 
si(m of any kind of trash. Wc do not want to pnll Mr. Francis's book alfo- 
f^'ctiicr to jiicccs, for some ])assa!i;ns arc nicely written; but we can not stand 
by to sec some tiiousauds of peojjlc tliirstiug for knowledge and drinking in 
innocence from such an unwliol(!soinc stream. 
We have read the book only half through — wc confess it : we could not get 
any furtiier. To do as nuich as this even we pulled np several times. Wc 
managed to get at the first stage over sixteen pages. When we opened the 
bonk wc anticipated better things. " I know," it begins, "of few tlungs more 
pleasant than to ramble for a mile along one of our southern beaches in the 
early days of autunni. We get the snilf of the sea-breeze; we sec prismatic 
colours dappling the M'ater, or curiously reflected from capes of wet sand ; 
solcnui beetling cliffs, broken here and there by a green slope, rise on one side 
of us; while on the other, we arc enchanted by the wild music of the waves, 
as tliey dash noisily upon the shingle at our feet, and then trickle back with 
faint lisjuug nnirraurs into the azure gulf." 
At the third page, however, we t rijiped a little over a confusion of " agates," 
"fossils," "pebbles," and "pebbly-beaches." As we progressed onwards we 
had sundry little slips over " quartz-agate" (p. 13), " rd)s of a conglomerate" 
(p. 13), "tubular arms branching out from one central trunk" of a choanite, 
and many like absurdities. W e were fairly taken aghast at page sixteen by 
the " limestone tubes" and gelatinous substance of the interspace between 
them attributed to that sponge ; this 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, since lost 
in the process of mineralization. We read on. " By the side of the choanite 
is another fossil which we now call an ' alcyouite', the learned name of the 
nearest living species being ' alcyonium digitatuni.' It is well kuo\ra in the 
Isle of Wight as ' dead man's fiugers.' " And what, indeed, do these petrified 
" dead-man's fingers" prove to be ? The wood-cut solves the mystery, the 
artist has di'awn what he has seen, and the fossil is really the roots of a creta- 
ceous sponge tur-ned upside down ! 
At the next page our author speaks of " a zoophyte not injected as are the 
choanites, but preserved bodily in gray fbnt. It is an undoubted ' actinia,' in 
every respect the same as those pulpy mdividnals who are displaying their jelly- 
like bodies and floral hues in many a household aquarium. This creature once 
floated up and dow in shallow marine pools, or clung to banks of ribbon-weed 
fringing the coast-skerries. At present, himself of stone, he is firmly wedged 
in a hollow within a large pebble, and reminds us of the words of a pretty 
song — 
' I ch'eamt 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 was thus describing was a choanite. 
No regard is paid to tlie alliances of the sponges, choanites, and ventriculites 
at all. Mr. Toulmin Smith would reject the assertion that the ventriculites 
must have been creatures lower down in the scale than the choanite, and Dr. 
Mantell would have been disgusted to have been told that living ventriculites 
" resembled in stature and configuration an ordinary toad-stool." Indeed, the 
name " ventrieulite," 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 uatui'e of the choanite, nor of the other fossils he figvu-es or 
describes, but to be entirely misled by fanciful similitudes. His " vermicular," 
fossils, his "astcrid," his "nondescript," his "myriapod," his " terebratida," 
are as gross instances of ignorance as anybody with a B.A. after Ms name coidd 
invent. In the " myriapod" of plate v. wc have merely a choanite cut thi'ough 
