1882.] 
Analyses oj Books, 735 
regret that “ certain quacks, with customary ignorance, have vul- 
garised and distorted the term Biology, and applied it, in contempt 
of Greekand Science, to their “ Mesmeric operations.” 
Dr. Wilson then proceeds to explain the divisions of this vast 
science, namely, morphology, the science of form, — comprising 
anatomy, development (commonly called embryology), and taxo- 
nomy or classification ; secondly, physiology, the science of 
function, — the distribution of species in time and space, or 
organic geography and palaeontology ; and lastly, what Dr. Wil- 
son calls the aetiology of animals and plants, — that is, the inquiry 
How has each species come to be what it is ? 
Inquirers of this last kind were a few years back “ relegated to 
the domain of the unscientific, if not to that of the impious as 
well.” Even now they are looked upon with very different feel- 
ings. The other day Prof. Stokes could say, at the Church 
Congress at Derby, “ I prefer resting in the statement of a spe- 
cial creation without prying into its method ” — an attitude which, 
if consistently adopted, would render all Science impossible. A 
contrasting and a far worthier position is taken by Dr. Martineau, 
who, as here quoted, says, “ What, indeed, have we found by 
moving out along all radii into the Infinite? — that the whole is 
woven together in one sublime tissue of intellectual relations, 
geometric and physical, the realised original of which all our 
science is but the partial copy. That science is the crowning 
product and supreme expression of human reason. . . . Unless, 
therefore, it takes more mental faculty to construe a universe 
than to cause it, to read the Book of Nature than to write it, we 
must more than ever look upon its sublime face as the living 
appeal of thought to thought.” 
In the third chapter Dr. Wilson expounds further the constitu- 
tion of the animal and plant kingdoms as bearing on the theory 
of descent, and gives a sketch of the primary classification of 
both the organic kingdoms. 
Chapter IV. is devoted to protoplasm, the physical basis of 
life. Here the author states that “the latter substance (proto- 
plasm) is resolvable by chemical analysis into the elements car- 
bon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, along with mere traces of 
sulphur and phosphorus.” We read, further, that “ Chemically, 
protoplasm stands as the type of a class of compounds, to which 
Mulder gave the name of proteine substances. ... Of such 
substances common albumen, seen in white of egg, is a familiar 
example ; and white of egg, indeed, hardly differs, save in minute 
chemical particulars, from proloplasm itself.” Here it must be 
remarked that opinions differ. J. Reinke (“ Botan. Zeitung,” 
1880, No. 48), having examined protoplasm obtained from the 
fruits of Ethalium septicum , detedts in it, in addition to the ele- 
ments above mentioned, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potas- 
sium, and iron. He maintains, further, that protoplasm contains 
scarcely 30 per cent of proteine-like matter, and that “ it can no 
