IlEVIEWS. 
/ i 
PHYSIOLOGICAL ESSAYS.* 
T he Reviews wMcli appear now-a-days in some of our heavy artillery of 
literature, partake more of the essay than the critique. Indeed, folk 
have come so much to disregard the criticism of writers, and to form their 
own judgment on hooks, that anything like a lengthy critical survey of a 
work would he received with disfavour and would he detrimental to the 
welfare of the journal in which it appeared. People like to read something 
that interests them, and if a notice of a hook is a long one, it will not he read 
unless it is something more than a notice. Hence it is the custom for a 
reviewer to (1) select a taking title ; (2) then to labour with scissors and 
paste to disembowel a number of hooks and so construct, by ingenious dove- 
tailing of quotations, a readable essay, and (3) to make a foot-note of the 
titles of the mutilated works, and finally serve up, as the cookery hooks say, 
with a little preliminary garnish. Of this kind of stutf is our modern 
Quarterly Review. In the hook upon our table, Dr. Child reprints such 
a series of es§,ays and otfers them in collected form to the public. We can 
say of them that they are interesting and even instructive, hut that they are 
critical we do distinctly deny. Even when they display an air of criticism 
as in the review (?) of the Memoirs on Heterogeny,” it is clearly the 
criticism of foregone conclusions and not of an impartial examination. 
Dr. Child’s volume is pleasant reading, hut it is a type of hook of which we 
cannot approve. 
SHADOW PERSPECTIVE.! 
T he term Sciography is used to designate the science by which the 
shadows thrown by bodies illuminated from a certain point can he 
determined with geometrical exactitude. It is a science which as yet has 
been almost entirely unworked, and which we think ought, in art, to he 
productive of very good results. The perspective of form is already pretty 
accurately understood by artists, hut the perspective of shadow is in most 
cases arrived at as a result of experimental teaching, and is expressed much 
in the same way as the student who when asked on a right line to con* 
struct an equilateral triangle,” set about doing it with a pencil and tape- 
measure. In the very clever work which Dr. Puckett has prepared, the art 
and science of shadow perspective are fully given and amply illustrated. 
The author has given a scientific basis to his propositions, and has done more 
for this branch of art than can he j ust yet realised by the body to whom he 
addresses himself. We commend his book to all who are interested in 
accurate drawing. 
* Essays on Physiological Subjects.” By Gilbert W. Child, M.D. of 
Exeter College, Oxford. London : Longmans, 1868. 
t Sciography ; or, the Radial projection of Shadows. By R. Campbell 
Puckett, Ph.D., Plead Master of the Bath School of Art. London ; Chap- 
man and Hall. 1868, 
