18 S 2 .J 
4§9 
A halyses of Books. 
The plates cannot be too highly commended, and are accom- 
panied by very full explanations. The work concludes with an 
Appendix containing a notice of species recorded during the 
period of publication, a copious index, and, what is of very great 
importance to the student, a carefully compiled glossary of the 
technical terms employed. There will also be found a chrono- 
logical list of works and papers relating to the Infusoria, from 
the period of their first discovery, in 1675, to the date of 
publication. 
That the present work is final is certainly not maintained by 
Mr. Kent, who rather looks upon the matter brought together as 
making a new starting-point for investigation : vast though the 
progress has been, much remains to be done ; many forms may 
prove to be only larval conditions when the whole of their life- 
history comes to be known. With the number of students and 
workers with the microscope many new forms will no doubt be 
hereafter discovered, and greatly enlarge the number already 
known, of which the present book includes about nine hundred. 
Irenicon No. 2. Faith : the Life Root of Science, Philosophy , 
Ethics, and Religion. By H. Griffith, F.G.S. London: 
Elliot Stock. 
We have here a work which, if extending in one direction at 
least to regions beyond our official competence, has for us not 
the less a very important aspect. The man of Science and the 
cultured outsider may possibly not feel bound to accept all the 
author’s contentions. Not the less, however, they will find it 
wholesome to follow him in his survey of the postulates which 
underlie our received systems. It is somewhat strange, and to 
our mind not quite satisfactory, that these postulates should be 
so completely overlooked. 
In our elementary treatises on astronomy, physics, chemistry, 
biology, the student is told of certain fundamental facts, which 
he is shown how to verify, to connect, and to explain. But he is 
not told that underneath these primary facts lies a stratum of 
assumptions, for nothing else can it be called. And it too often 
happens that the finished, graduated master ignores what the 
school-boy has never learned. The old geometrician places his 
postulates at the beginning of his work. Why should not his 
example be followed ? But of this hereafter. 
Mr. Griffith’s object is to vindicate the position and the 
authority of Faith by proving it equally necessary to the exist- 
ence of Science as to that of Religion. With this purpose in 
VOL. IV. (THIRD SERIES). 2 K 
