230 
Analyses of Books . 
[April, 
interpretation of natural phenomena he rejedts. A distindt vital 
force he is not able to admit. Innate ideas, personal continuance 
after death, the freedom of the will, and the idea of a personal 
God are also set aside. Hence it appears that the author is suf- 
ficiently “advanced ” in his views, and that his work is in its 
character extra-scientific, if not in some of its fundamentals, yet 
in its results. Hence he appeals not so much to the men of re- 
search, of experiment, and observation as to those minds who 
crave for general conclusions, even if resting upon an insecure 
basis. That the author’s learning is wide, and that he tells us 
many interesting and little-known things, must be admitted. We 
read — “Schubert speaks of a spontaneous origin of water in sudden 
accumulations of clouds ; Robbelen thinks that the animal or- 
ganism produces nitrogen, and even the celebrated Ehrenberg 
appears yet doubtful whether the organisms create or merely 
transform the materials they contain” ! Miracles he declares 
impossible, on the questionable ground that they involve a 
departure from or a violation of the laws of Nature. In a passage 
questioning the order and symmetry of the Solar System, the 
author, quoting Hudson Tuttle, asks — “ Why did the Creator 
give rings to Saturn, which, surrounded by its eight moons, can 
have little need of them, whilst Mars is left in total darkness ? ” 
As Mars has been found to have two moons, this passage, we 
submit, might have been fairly modified. 
The evidence which Dr. Buchner gives in support of abio- 
genesis seems to us singularly weak, and little in harmony with 
the results of recent investigations. If we do not misunder- 
stand him, he adduces on behalf of this view the appearance of 
intestinal worms in special parts of animals ; the origin of Infu- 
soria, “ where air, heat, and moisture combine ; ” the upspringing 
of vegetable species not previously known in the district, where 
a forest has been burnt down or a lake drained. “ Where a saline 
spring gushes forth there soon appear well-marked Calophites and 
salt-water creatures, no trace of which is to be found for many 
miles around. Since the increase of pine-plantations in the en- 
virons of Paris there is met with the lamia (Lamia, or rather 
Astyonomus, edilis), an insedt belonging to Northern Europe, 
which had never been seen in the above region.” We have taken 
the insedt in question in regions situate farther south than Paris, 
and, as it is swift and powerful on the wing, we need not feel 
surprised that it has taken up its abode in the pine-woods above 
mentioned. 
The author’s assumption that the entombed elephants in Sibe- 
ria are proofs of a “ much higher ” temperature than now prevails 
may reasonably be challenged. Those elephants were coated 
with long woolly hair, and within the frozen bodies have been 
found portions of plants which had evidently been swallowed as 
food, and which are identifiable as similar to the modern vegeta- 
lion of Northern Asia. That at certain epochs the temperature 
