302 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
apparatus, but the microscopist cannot fail to perceive that his interests 
have not received any consideration from the editors of the Dictionary. In 
the conduct of the other departments, we think the gentlemen employed to 
bring the dictionary up to £he standard of modern science, have discharged 
their several duties with intelligence and discrimination. The work is a 
very valuable one in all respects but those to which we have drawn at- 
tention, but in these it is certainly u behind the time,” and we cannot but 
regret that such a circumstance should exist to mar the usefulness of so 
admirably conceived a plan. 
ICELAND.* 
T HIS work is the account of a tour made in exploration of the north-west 
peninsula of Iceland and the Yatna Jokul, and it would doubtless 
interest those of our readers who are of an exploring turn and are at a loss 
for a country in which adventure may be combined with a sufficient 
amount of danger to make it piquant and attractive. One of the author’s 
objects was to investigate the ornithology of the island, and he has to a 
certain extent carried it out successfully. The bulk of the volume is occupied 
by the details of the trip. This is usual in books of travel, but for what 
earthly reason it is so, we cannot divine. We doubt if any one ever cares 
to wade through this part of a book. It is very tedious to read on page after 
page through a volume, and learn nothing except the number of eggs eaten 
by the author at his breakfast, or the difficulties which attended his repose. 
Mr. Shepherd, however, evidently thinks otherwise, and though one of his 
aims related to scientific investigation, the greater part of his book is filled 
with those u notes from my diary” which are so distressingly dreary to the 
— well we shall only say — reviewer. Passing by this portion of the author's 
lucubrations, we find toward the conclusion of the volume, a few details of 
scientific interest which we think may be profitably “ crystallised out” 
from the rest of the letter-press. The following description of the sulphur- 
mountains is of interest : u These large hills are a very wonderful sight. 
They are of various colours, a variety of mixtures of red and yellow. From 
their sides are emitted numerous jets of steam, and masses of bright yellow 
sulphur are strewed all round them. At the foot on the eastern side are 
the mud-geysers — huge caldrons of blue mud in different states of solution. 
Some bubble and spurt like filthy water j others are so gross that they can 
scarcely heave the massive bubbles to the surface. They are the centres of 
broken and dilapidated cones, raised by their own sputterings. The highest 
part of their cones, which was that part towards the mountains, was about 
three feet. They are however continually changing in shape ; and I ob- 
served that these portions of the cones themselves was (sic) different from 
what they were when I visited them in 1861. All around the soil was 
* The “ North-West Peninsula of Iceland.” By C. W. Shepherd, M.A. 
F.Z.S. London : Longmans, 1867. 
