i88i.] 
Analyses of Books. 
609 
R. Russell, who, in a former paper (“Journal of Science,” 1879, 
p. 372), took occasion to sneer at Science as “ blind and groping 
physicism.” We need, therefore, feel little surprise at finding 
him come forward as a champion of competitive examination, 
and pronouncing the “ popular cry against cramming not very 
respectable.” 
Two of the papers, viz., that on “Money, Coin, and Currency,” 
by J. A. Pidton, and “Plan of a Self-Acting Method of Regulating 
the Stock of Gold for the Paper Currency,” seem to us more 
suited for a chamber of commerce. 
Concerning “ Eirik the Red’s Saga ” and the “ Life of Mr. 
Justice Story,” we have nothing to say, and may make a very 
similar admission concerning a memoir entitled “ On the Simplest 
Possible Experiment in Physical Science,” especially as its 
author, the Rev. T. P. Kirkman, F.R.S., has at the conclusion 
criticised himself. 
Mr. A. J. Mott, F.G.S., examines the “ Nebular Theory,” and 
points out some very grave objections to its truth. He suggests 
that “ the heat radiated into space cannot be really lost, but must 
be retained as energy in some other form, possibly in the form of 
the cause of gravitation, to make the duration of a moving and 
living universe practically without limit, both in the future and 
in the past.” 
“ Life in the Lowest Organisms ” is the title of an interesting 
paper by the Rev. H. H. Higgins. The author remarks very 
justly that “ no one has ever seen or known protoplasm, except 
as the protoplasm of some special form of living animal or plant.” 
Speaking of Protomyxa aurantiaca , which Prof. Haeckel pro- 
nounces the lowest known living animal, he shows that it is 
capable of feeling hunger, and asks how is this sensation to be 
accounted for ? “ Here, where we cannot go back to preceding 
lines of evolution, where there is no hereditary chain that we 
know of, at the very base of the scale of life, hunger is exhibited.” 
“ No alternative seems to be left but to describe this habit of 
the creature (its encasing itself with grains of sand, &'c.) as re- 
presenting the first beginnings of that selective instincft by which 
.... untutored man himself sets up his hut or his wigwam.” 
Mr. Higgins points out the beauty of the shell of the Polycistina 
as inexplicable on the mere principle of utility. Neither, he 
holds, was it developed only for man to admire. He shows that 
twelve of the most prominent characteristics of the world of life 
appear in the lowest form of living things, whilst lifeless matter 
is destitute of any of them. “ In the present state of our know- 
ledge the beginning of life must, it would seem, be held to bean 
exception to ascertained continuity in Nature as expressed by the 
theory of evolution.” The author, if we remember rightly, has 
on former occasions used the term Evolution, not as including, 
but as in some respecfts opposed to, Darwinism. He remarks 
that “ constitutional differences between specimens of the same 
