KEVIEWS. 
171 
reader. It is most graphically and forcibly written, and the illustrations — 
chiefly from sketches of the author’s — possess an artistic character which is 
not often found in treatises of this class. The illustrations of some of 
the old streets in the buried city of Pompeii are unusually clever pen 
and ink drawings. The second part of the work describes Vesuvius as it 
is, and deals with the more recent volcanic eruptions. This portion of 
Professor Phillips’s writings includes a discussion of the various questions of 
physical geology related to the manifestations of volcanic agency. Here we 
find an accoimt of the characteristic phenomena of eruptions, the relations 
of periods of rest to periods of activity, the form and structure of Vesuvius, 
the Phlegraean fields, the minerals of Vesuvius, volcanic energy, and 
Vesuvian lava. The last chapter in the book is really the only one which 
is of special interest to the physical philosopher. It is entitled General 
views leading to a theory of volcanic excitement,” and contains the latest 
opinions of Professor Phillips on this the all-important Geological question 
of the day. Our readers will be aware that speculation at the present mo- 
ment turns upon the axiom that the earth was formerly an incandescent 
mass.* It is satisfactory to find, then, that so excellent a thinker as Professor 
Phillips inclines his thought ” in this direction. Indeed, he as much as 
admits that the earth has cooled down to solidity from a former fluid con- 
dition, as will be evident from the following concluding paragraph of his 
last chapter : — 
^^Here, then, we pause, not without a conviction that Geology is 
acquiring, even with reference to the variable might of subterranean fire, a 
sure ground of conviction that it is a part of the system of slow and 
measured change, which has been traced in operation through the members 
of the solar system and the starry spaces beyond, to the greater and more 
distant masses of shining vapour, which, though they stand to us at present 
as the ‘ Flammantia moenia mundi,’ may even now be silently gathering 
into new suns and planets and satellites, or forming elliptic rings of 
asteroids, such as were seen on the morning of November 14, 1868, by the 
author at Oxford.” 
We have to congratulate Geologists on the fact that so eminent a member 
of their body adheres to the nebular hypothesis, for such it virtually is. At 
the same time we cannot declare ourselves thoroughly content with this 
work of Professor Phillips’s. From its pages we learn nothing of what has 
been done either with the compass or the spectroscope. Fouqu^ and Pal- 
mieri receive very scant justice at the author’s hand, and the important 
labours of Forbes and Sorby are slurred over in a manner which is as dis- 
creditable to Professor Phillips as it is unjust to the chronicles of British 
progress in Philosophical Geology. 
* The Reviewer was not aware that Mr. Forbes discusses this extremely 
interesting subject in his article in the present number. — Ed. Popular 
Science Revieiu. 
