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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
original j and that lie by no means went further than a certain fashionable 
circle do at present, who, knowing that a few undeniably great men hold 
opinions that are Atheistic, go with them to a limited extent. In a word, 
Sir Henry Holland was a well-informed, polished man, and above all things, 
he was a man of the world. But it must from the outset be clearly under- 
stood that he was no thinker. In the days of Galileo he would, we doubt 
not, have been on the persecuting side. Then, as to this volume before us, 
what is our opinion of it? We must say unhesitatingly most unfavour- 
able. Had we indeed no better sample of what the author was able to 
produce, our verdict would have been that he was shallow, though well- 
informed ; and we cannot conceive anything but a son’s pride in his fathers 
work, that could justify its publication. We see in it indications of the 
mental deterioration of the author ; and we cannot conceive anyone save 
a relative — whose natural sympathy would exceed his reason — consenting 
to the issue of the book. We have only read some seven of the essays 
the volume contains, but these were papers on subjects requiring a power 
of condensed thought for their just development. And what have we found ? 
Why the merest shadow of mental power. A sort of butterfly-like flicker- 
ing around the solid flame of clear reasoning force, and an inability to grasp 
powerfully the questions stumbled over often enough. Yet in all these 
papers — even in his last contribution to literature, which appears in its 
naturally unfinished state in the preface written by his son — there is a 
vast mastery of style, which he possessed to the last. And of this it is diffi- 
cult to speak or write too highly ; it is characterised by clearness and forci- 
bleness to an extreme ; and for that reason alone these his last essays are 
pleasant reading. But as any addition to philosophy they are indeed barren 
in the most extreme degree. 
PALAEONTOLOGY OF VICTORIA.* 
T HIS is the first of a series of publications of the fossil organic remains of 
Victoria, prepared by the able and indefatigable palaeontologist, Professor 
McCoy, corresponding in plan with the decades of the geological surveys of 
England, Canada and India, and will contain figures and descriptions of the 
more characteristic fossils of each formation found in the colony. The 
present number contains notices of some species of graptolites, which are 
interesting, not only as proving that the gold-bearing reefs of Victoria are of 
lower silurian age, but that many of the forms are identical with species 
occurring in the lower silurian rocks of the British Islands and United 
States of America, thus showing their world- wide distribution in 
the old geological time ; even the Homans obtained their gold from 
quartz veins in slates at Gogofau, North Wales, of the same geological 
age as the Australian formation. Three plates illustrate an extinct 
* “ Prodromus of the Palaeontology of Victoria ; or, Figures and Descrip- 
tions of Victorian Organic Remains. Decade I.” By Frederick McCoy, 
F.G.S. Melbourne : 1874. 
