EEVIEWS. 
37 
hofeu." By L. Agassiz. "Ou the Geographical Distrihution 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. A'errill. Copper- 
bearing Belt of Canada East ;" and " On the Magnesian Limestone of the Lower Silurian 
series of Prairie du Chien containing Criuoids and Fossil Shells." By C. T. Jackson. 
EEVIEWS. 
Tlie ScJiool Mamial of Geology. 
By J. Beete Jukes, M.A., F.E.S., Local Director of the Geological Survey 
of Ireland. Ediuburgh : A. and C. Black. 1863. 
If we think it beneath the dignity of !Mr. Jnkes's position to write school 
manuals, and regret the time spent on such trivial labours b}^ 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 infonns 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 dilFiculty, Mr. Jukes 
fancies, " the learner meets with in the study of geolog}', is the want of 
elementar}'- 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, audit 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 witho\it 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 gther difficiilties 
barring the general study of geology, time and money, — time to examine 
over extensive territories, money to defray the expenses of travel and of 
coUecliiig. Local geologists working out special areas and subjects ma}'' be 
