476 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
whilst its exhaustiveness and clearness combine to make it the standard book 
of reference on all that relates to the early lake-settlements. 
ORGANIC HARMONIES * 
F OR those who are addicted to the Bridgewater-treatise class of scien- 
tific literature, Dr. Hartwig’s work must possess the highest fascination. 
Written in the most thoroughly religious spirit, abounding in quotations 
from Holy Writ, advocating the most toothsome teleological doctrines, it 
appeals in the strongest manner to those who desire to see science made 
palatable to the most credulous. We by no means wish to inveigh against 
such treatises as the present. Apart from any little scientific merit they 
may possess, they have a mission of their own to fulfil — the superficial en- 
lightenment of those who see only in philosophy an enemy to religion. It 
is, however, a pity that they are so generally prepared by writers who neglect 
recent discoveries, and who, ignoring all the progress made during several 
years, content themselves with selections and compilations from some half- 
dozen text-books, four or five of which at least are themselves full of errors. 
The book before us is, we regret to say, just one of the objectionable class to 
which we refer. Allusions to the Almighty are painfully plentiful, and 
blunders in matters-of-fact are equally abundant. Melancholy it is that 
those authors who profess to see so much of God’s handicraft in the pheno- 
mena of nature, do not take pains to study nature to more advantage. It 
js one thing to spend a lifetime, as Darwin has done, in the keen investi- 
gation of nature’s operations, and quite another to sit down with five or six 
standard treatises before you, and with the aid of scissors and paste complete 
a “ taking ” volume for one’s publisher. The latter method is, we think, 
not entirely unknown to Dr. Hartwig, whom we would counsel to refer more 
to nature and less to books in preparing his next edition. Written in a style 
which is florid without being sublime, and ornamented without being impres- 
sive, “ The Harmonies of Nature ” professes to be a popular history of the 
earth and its inhabitants, especially with regard to the so-called co-adaptation 
of one to the other. The author commences with a description of the 
“ splendour of the starry heavens,” and having traced the development of 
the globe and of its organic life up to the creation of man, he then brings 
his powerful mind to bear upon the animal and vegetable world as they are ; 
and concludes his labours by pointing out to the reader what are “ the aims 
of human existence.” When our author confines his attention to the polyps 
and mollusks whose forms adorn his pages, he tells us some interesting though 
by no means novel facts concerning them ; but when he enters upon the less 
defined regions of speculative philosophy, he astonishes us now and then, we 
frankly admit. In fact, what Dr. Johnson once said of a work upon which 
his opinion was asked, is singularly applicable to the present book “ It 
contains a great deal that is new and that is true ; but the true parts are by 
* “ The Harmonies of Nature ; or, the Unity of Creation.” By Dr. G. 
Hartwig. London : Longmans & Co. 1866. 
