ISO 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
the publishers are entitled to credit for the enterprise they have shown in 
introducing so good a work to the notice of English readers. The subject 
discussed by the author is physical geography, and as this is a branch of 
science which may be said to have undergone little or no serious change 
during the past ten or fifteen years, it is easy to comprehend that M. Figuier’s 
usual Imp-hazard mode of compiling has stood him in better service than 
when lie has applied it to other more progressive departments. In this- 
volume we are treated to an account of the general physical features of the 
globe, and of the laws which tend to give it its existing form, and to keep 
it in its present place in the solar system. The work opens with a pleasantly 
written sketch of the geography of the ancients, from the time of Genesis 
down to the period of Columbus. Then follow the six books into which 
the whole subject-matter is divided, and the headings of which are as 
follow : The situation of the terrestrial globe in space ; the form and dimen- 
sions of the terrestrial globe ; the surface of the globe ; the temperature of 
the globe ; the fresh waters ; and lastly, u the world’s seas.” 
In this way the history of the mighty influences which are, even now, 
shaping the globe to its future form, are successively discussed, and by a 
number of exquisite engravings, some of them a little idealised, the reader’s 
interest is awakened in and his attention is concentrated on the author’s 
account. The chapters devoted to the history of the Arctic regions are 
among the most forcible and graphic in the whole work, and the illustra- 
tions are many of them novel, and all most striking and picturesque. The 
b )ok, taken as a whole, is really a good one. 
ASIATIC CHOLERA.* 
I N the whole range of ./Etiology, there is perhaps no disease, whose natural 
history is at once so interesting and yet so unsatisfactorily established: 
as that of Cholera. AVe do not mean what is sometimes in this country 
termed English Cholera, for that is a disease which is in no way epidemic-, 
and which is really but a particular form of colic ; but the Asiatic Cholera, 
that terrible pest, which, when it reaches these climates, slays at least thirty 
per cent, of those it attacks, and which, in the East, attains a virulence and 
destructiveness, which only those who have seen strong men struck down in 
a single hour can realise. What is the nature of this terrible plague ; how 
did it first originate ; and by what means is it propagated and distributed 
from its chief centre ? — these are the problems which, despite the splendid 
treatise which I)r. Maenamara has given us, are still unsolved by Scientific 
Medicine. A great approach, however, to a philosophic solution of these 
points is made by Dr. Maenamara, who, in the 550 pages of which his work 
consists, not only gives us an able analysis of the current doctrines, but 
supplies us with the facts of his long, ripe experience as an Indian doctor. 
Not only to the physician, but to the general scientific man, and es- 
* “A Treatise on Asiatic Cholera.” By C. Maenamara, Surgeon to the 
Calcutta Ophthalmic Hospital. London: Churchill, 1870. 
