KEVIEWS. 
195 
— wliicli is fully described in tbe volume — is marvellously clever. Anent 
the cork doors of these cells, and the silk lining to them, we also think the 
author is perfectly right in supposing that the enlargement made from time 
to time is indicated by the width of the door and in the number of layers of 
silk which it contains. Indeed, we do not see what other conclusion can be 
drawn from the table given in Appendix H. On the whole we do not re- 
member for a long time having read a book which pleased us so much, and 
we return our hearty thanks to its author for its publication. 
BRITISH AND AMERICAN GEOLOGY.* 
W E took up Dr. Dawson’s book in a happy spirit of expectation, for the 
book looked a good one, and the author was familiar to us as the 
Discoverer of Eozoon, and as the writer of some other interesting works of 
a geological character. We laid it down with a very different feeling, for we 
found in its scientific parts nothing that has not found its way into every 
popular manual that the press has produced during the past fifteen years, 
and in its other portions about the very feeblest and most drivelling argu- 
ment that we have yet seen against the school which Darwin, Huxley, 
Spencer, and Mill represent in their countries. The book, we are told, is 
written for the purpose of showing the scientific world that those masters ot 
human thought are utterly wrong in their beliefs, and that Dr. Dawson and 
his very few scientific followers are alone correct. Now, if there was any 
attempt at argument, we could have pardoned the attempt which the author 
has made ; for when a man’s object is a good one, as Dr. Dawson’s is un- 
doubtedly, we are bound to listen to him even when his views are most 
strongly directed against us. But assuredly when he adopts the logic of the 
Sunday School, and attempts the mode of reasoning which the good-natured 
curate finds thoroughly convincing at a country tea-board, we are com- 
pelled to eschew his doctrines. Yet assuredly it is not in the least doing 
an injustice to Dr. Dawson’s book to say it is conceived thoroughly in the 
Sunday School strain. "We may, therefore, be excused for declining to 
answer any of his statements on the subject of theology, on the score 
that they were originally addressed to the readers of the Leisure Hour,” 
from which periodical, we believe, the greater part of this volume is taken. 
The plan of the book, so far as its science is concerned, is simply to devote 
a separate chapter to each formation, commencing with the Lmirentian and 
terminating with the Post-pliocene deposits. Besides these there is a chapter 
on the subject of the genesis of the earth, and two on the question of man’s 
origin. The illustrations to the volume are with two or three exceptions 
simply barbarous, and we are somewhat astonished at a scientific man’s 
admitting into his pages a series of plates which more than anything 
* “The Story of the Earth and Man,” by J.W. Dawson, LL.D., E.R.S. 
London ; Hodder and Stoughton, 1873. “ The School Manual of Geology,” 
by the late J. Beete Jukes, M.A., E.R.S. Edited by A. J. Jukes-Browne, of 
St. John’s Coll., Cambridge. Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black, 1873. 
