488 Analyses of Books. [August, 
recent investigations. Nor can we unreservedly accept the ac- 
count of anticyclonic systems given on p. 929. 
In other respedts we have observed nothing to which excep- 
tion can be fairly taken. Omissions will doubtless be detected 
by the specialist in the various branches, but to record every 
phenomenon and every generalization in so wide a subjedt 
formed no part of the plan of the work, and would have been 
indeed in a book of moderate compass simply impracticable. 
Probably no work in the language is so well adapted to serve at 
once as a college text-book and as a manual for reference. If we 
may suggest any improvement it would be the introduction at 
the end of each section of a condensed bibliography. 
Life of Sir William E. Logan , LL.D., F.R.S., &c., First 
Director of the Geological Survey of Canada. By Bernard 
J. Harrington, B.A., Ph.D, London : Sampson Low, 
Marston, Searle, and Rivington. 
In geology, unlike chemistry and physics, the primary facts from 
which laws are deduced, and upon which theories may be founded 
are to be met with, not in the quiet of the laboratory, but in the 
ravine, the landslip, the mine, and the quarry. Hence the search 
for such facts, more especially in “ new ” countries, involves 
travel, hardship, and adventure, as well as an almost unlimited 
expenditure of time. Among those who have devoted the better 
portion of their lives to this kind of active exploration, a high 
and honourable place rightly belongs to the subject of this 
memoir, — the founder of the Geological Survey of Canada. Sir 
William Logan, though of unmixed Scottish parentage, was born 
at Montreal, but was sent in his sixteenth year to be educated at 
the High School of Edinburgh. His training was exclusively 
classical, — in other words, verbal. But he must have had 
sterling metal in his composition, since his school career did not, 
as has been the case with so many, render him unobservant, and 
incapable of attending to and learning from things. There can, 
however, he little doubt that a more rational education would 
have enabled him to take a higher rank as a man of Science in 
after life. In 1816, he entered the University of Edinburgh 
classes in mathematics, logic, and chemistry. Concerning the 
latter subject, he writes, “ as to the chemistry, at it prizes are 
never given.” Thus it appears that nearly seventy years ago 
the unhappy system of “ prizes ” had become one of the charac- 
teristics of British education. To geology, his attention does 
not seem to have been drawn, though John Playfair was at that 
