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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
want of filling out of tlie brain-case, by lateral or vertical expansion.” Here 
we may remark that the Professor takes the opportunity of saying a word in 
favour of bis view that the brain of man is absolutely different from that of 
the ape, for in concluding the chapter he writes : — 
“ In all the negro-skulls'in the present collection, as in those of Boschis- 
men, Mincopies, Australians, and every other variety that has come under 
my observation, the essential characters of the archencephalous sub-class, 
and of its sole genus and species, are as definitely marked as in the skulls of 
the highest white races.” 
Altogether we may say of M. Du Chaillu’s work, that it is interesting as 
a book of travels, and is instructive in relation to those departments of 
science to which the author has given his attention. If we were to be very 
critical, we should say that in many instances the style was rough and jerky. 
But on the whole the author’s English is readable, and his book is good. 
M. Du Chaillu is not an Englishman, and cannot therefore be expected to 
distinguish himself in what so many English travellers fail — clear English 
composition. 
POPULAR BOTANY.* 
A WONDERFUL man, indeed, M. Figuier appears to be. There is no 
subject which he is not ready to write upon, and we must confess 
that his compilations have a certain merit to recommend them. He is in 
the department of scientific book-manufacturers, what M. Dumas is in 
light literature. He wields a pen which, in the language of the “ liners,” 
is eminently “prolific.” Not a year passes by without the appearance of 
some three or four large treatises bearing the stamp of M. Figuier’s 
factory. His great book on Insects has not yet been translated, but doubt- 
less we shall soon have an English edition of it. Meanwhile, we have his 
“Vegetable World ” reproduced in our “mother tongue,” and it behoves us 
to say a few words about it. 
There is hardly any branch of science which is undergoing so little radical 
change as botany. That which we were taught ten years ago is that which 
students learn to-day. This is at least the case in regard to the purely scientific 
divisions of the subject. Of course each day brings forth its list of newly- 
discovered plants, and in this way not only adds to the enormous accumula- 
tion of specific and generic names, but affords the botanist new facts from 
which to discover the natural affinities and the geographical distribution 
of the vegetable species. But as regards the physiology t of the plant — 
the offices of the various tissues and organs which compose it — there is little 
to be added, even in the year 1867, to the grand generalizations put forward 
in Schleiden’s “ Treatise,” % published so many years ago. Indeed, we may 
* “ The Vegetable World: being a History of Plants, with their Bota- 
nical Descriptions and peculiar Properties.” By Louis Figuier. London : 
Chapman and Hall. 1867. 
t Always excepting the beautiful researches of Mr. Darwin on the subject 
of fertilization. 
% “ Principles of Scientific Botany, or Botany as an inductive Science.” 
