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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
resemble those well known pictures which M. Figuier is so fond of admit- 
ting into his works. Indeed the illustrations are altogether miserably few, and 
most of them are cuts of this kind. Perhaps the best engraving in the book 
is that of l^ozoon canadense, for it illustrates the structure in the imperfect 
manner that is characteristic of a good and faithful drawing. On this subject 
the author is of course at home, and we naturally find that Messrs. King and 
Rowney do not receive very favourable consideration at his hands, and doubt- 
less correctly so, for there cannot be a question that Eozoon is simply a low 
type of foraminiferous structure. In treating of the Carboniferous age we are 
sorry to find the following paragraph, as it gives us but a poor insight into an 
author's character. Dr. Dawson observes that ‘‘ He has named and 
described the oldest known animal. He has described the oldest true Exogen, 
and the oldest known Pine tree. He was concerned in the discovery of the I 
oldest known land snails, and found the oldest millipedes. He has just I 
described the oldest bituminous bed composed of spore cases ; and he claims 
that his genus Hylonomus includes the oldest animals which have a fair 
claim to be considered reptiles.” We feel here disposed to add that he has 
certainly produced some of the oldest ideas on the religious aspects of the 
question also. When the author comes to deal with the Mesozoic age we 
certainly conceive that he is right in rejecting the notion that we are still 
living in the Cretaceous period. He states that : — 
In this broad sense we may be said to be still living in the Laurentian 
epoch. In other words the whole plan of the earth’s development is one 
and the same, and each class of general condition once introduced is per- 
manent somewhere. But in another important sense we are not living in the 
Cretaceous epoch ; otherwise the present site of London would be a thousand 
fathoms deep in the ocean ; the Ichthyosaurs and Ammonites would be 
disporting themselves in the water, and the huge Dinosaurs and strange 
Pterodactyls living on the land.” 
In these observations we thoroughly concur, and we wish we could have 
been able to say so of the entire volume. But we suppose the author does 
not expect his book to command a scientific public, and he knows doubtless 
that the bitterest words will have all the more relish for the popular unedu- 
cated party, when they are the outpourings of a scientific man himself 
against the leading savans of the day. We have only to say in conclusion 
that the book, as a tolerably general sketch of geological phenomena, is a 
good one, more especially in those parts which are not dependent on the ' 
author’s reasoning powers. 
Mr. Jukes-Browne’s little book is a capital introduction to geology. It 
was, even when it was first brought out by the late Professor Jukes himself, 
an excellent work j and now the editor has taken so much trouble, and , 
has exercised such judicious skill in the direction of his amendments, 
that the volume is for the present date as good a book as it unquestionably 
was when it first appeared about ten years since. Parts of some chapters 
have been quite re-written, and others have been modified in accordance | 
with the changes that the science has undergone since. But it seems to us i 
that the editor very wisely left the chemical part as it was. So many < 
systems are now in vogue, and it is so impossible to say which will even- 
tually hold its own against its compeers, that a wise discretion was shown 
