EEYIEWS. 
289 
to peruse his account of the various ingenious and complex plans which he 
has adopted in order to make the research. Of the many questions dis- 
cussed in the volume under consideration, not the least interesting is the 
chapter devoted to the subject of hanging as a mode of killing. In this 
portion of his hook Dr. Haughton gives a number of calculations as to me- 
chanical work done in the dropping of the sufferer, and he shows very 
clearly, from an investigation of the mode of hanging adopted in this 
country and on the American continent, that the latter mode has many advan- 
tages over the former. The writer of this notice of Dr. Haughton’s book is 
particularly interested in one case of hanging mentioned by the author, as 
he was himself present at the operation, and he can fully substantiate the 
writer’s remarks. All through, the book deals with the questions of me- 
chanics, applied to the operations of nearly all purposes of the animal king- 
dom ; and as the author has made all the calculations, all the dissections, 
and all the weighings with his own hands, with every precaution of which 
he could think, we may fairly suppose that the work is one whose im- 
portance, as the first essay in a study which must eventually assume con- 
siderable value, cannot be very much overrated. At all events, for ourselves 
we may say that we close the most pleasantly-written book we have met 
for some time with a hope that the author may again come before us ere 
long with ^another volume of his instructive and valuable essays. 
SSUKEDLY a life of Humboldt was required. Though many and 
many a biography has been issued by the press, we quite agree with 
the distinguished editor that all those sketches hitherto issued were in 
reality the merest outlines of this great man’s life, and not a few wert; 
merely those collections of facts which anyone who was conversant with 
the scientific world of the first half of the present century could quite 
readily have put together. But the present history is, so far as it has been 
possible to make it, a perfect sketch, not only of Humboldt as a samnt, 
but in his ordinary character as a man. However, this is but true to some 
extent of the English edition, which the translators inform us in their preface 
is but a portion of the work, it having been deemed advisable to omit the 
third volume, devoted to a critical investigation of Humboldt’s scientific 
labours,” and also the last section of the second volume, consisting of an 
elaborate catalogue of his voluminous works.” The Misses Lassell think 
that these omissions have been wise, for that the book will thereby be 
enabled to appeal to a wider, if less educated, class. Eor ourselves, we 
must, at the outset, express our most decided difference of opinion. It 
seems to us that a life which has been sketched out so fully and so well by 
* “ Life of Alexander von Humboldt,” compiled in commemoration of 
the centenary of his birth, by J. Lowenberg, B. Ave-Lallemant, and Alfred 
Dove. Edited by Prof. Karl Bruhns, Director of the Observatory at 
Leipzig j in 2 vols., translated from the German by Jane and Caroline 
Lassell. London : Longmans, 1878. 
VOL. XII. — NO. XLVIII. U 
HUMBOLDT’S LIFE.* 
