i88i.J 
Analyses of Books, 
47 
the tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of 
directing the movements of the adjoining parts, aCts like the 
brain of one of the lower animals, where the brain, seated within 
the anterior end of the body, receives impressions from the 
sense-organs and directs the several movements. 
The conclusions thus reached are therefore of great importance 
to the philosophy of Biology, and the work will consequently 
well repay the study of all sufficiently acquainted with botanical 
terminology. 
Geschichte der Mathematischen Wissenschaften.* Von Dr. Hein- 
rich Suter. Zurich : Orell Fiissli and Co. 
The three parts of this work now before us carry the subject 
down from the earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century. 
The author announces that his objeCt has been to produce neither 
a critical history of mathematics nor a collection of the biogra- 
phies of mathematicians. The former undertaking would have 
been, he considers, presumptuous within the available limits, 
and the latter useless. The history of Science, he justly holds, 
should be “ no mere dry enumeration of faCts, no chronological 
collocation of events, no collection of the biographies of its cul- 
tivators or enumeration of their works. It should present a total 
idea of the structure of Science in its organic development, 
beginning from the foundation and continuing to the latest stage 
of completion. Such a history of culture, viewed as the inward 
spirit of civilisation, he considers the most difficult, but probably 
the loftiest, task which the human mind can undertake. He 
holds that of all the sciences Mathematics afford the best oppor- 
tunity for tracing out the intellectual progress of mankind, from 
the very severity of its character and the certainty of its move- 
ments. In this opinion there is much truth : Mathematics, from 
its very nature, is exempt from those delusions, false theories, 
and revolutions which have troubled the evolution of the other 
sciences. It has had no phases corresponding to alchemy, to 
quinarianism, to eleCtro-biology. It has refused to ally itself 
with charlatanism, and its peaceful career has never been checked 
or diverted by persecution, 
The modern negleCt of the history of Mathematics he ascribes 
to the faCt that historians rarely feel any interest in exaCt 
science. 
In the first portion of this work the author naturally takes a 
somewhat wide scope. Pure mathematics could not then be 
History of the Mathematical Sciences. 
