1884.] 
Analyses of Books. 
235 
The Mason College Magazine. Vol. II., No. 1. February, 1884. 
Birmingham : Cornish Bros. 
This issue shows no falling off in the quality of its contents. 
Foremost stands an article on “ Schiller as a Philosophic Poet,” 
recalling to our mind strange memories of the past. Will man 
never be able to unsing the lamentation of the “ Gods of Greece,” 
by harmonising the poetic and the scientific Welt-anschanung ? 
Certain ideas lately launched among us make us hope that this 
may yet be the case. 
“ Natural Selection and Degeneration ” is a most suggestive 
paper. We read, some little time ago, a medical critique on certain 
portraits of modern female beauty, but all to the eye of the phy. 
sician wearing the stamp of scrofula or of phthisis. Much of 
this, among the middle and the working classes, and the parvenus , 
who are fast elbowing the territorial aristocracy from their seats, 
is the outcome of our industrial organisation. 
In an essay on Swedenborg, the scientific merit commonly as- 
cribed to this mystic is denied. We are naturally sceptical con- 
cerning visions which reveal the assumed features of the known 
planets, but ignore those not yet discovered. 
A paper on the relations between plants and animals shows 
no small ability. 
We were not aware that political subjects are discussed at the 
meetings-of the “ Union ” — not merely questions of what may 
be called political philosophy, but concerning the details of party 
warfare. Fortunately we were not compelled to read the debate 
in question, or we might have fared little better than the unfor- 
tunate masters of arts of the Sorbonne, when they encountered 
the “ Borbonesa tart ” concodted by Panurge. Might we pre- 
sume to call the attention of the students to a passage which we 
quoted in our Odtober issue (1882, p. 625) from the American 
“ Popular Science Monthly ” ? 
The N aturalists' World. Vol. I., Nos. 1, 2, and 3. London : 
W. Swan Sonnenschein and Co. Manchester : J. Heywood. 
The number of scientific periodicals has strikingly increased 
during the last few years. We can only hope that the demand 
is growing in at least an equal proportion ; otherwise some of 
them can flourish — as indeed they seem to do — only by the in- 
troduction of irrelevant, if not illegitimate, features. 
R 2 
