290 
[May, 
Analyses of Books. 
But we must, for the present, pursue our examination of this 
strangely interesting work no further, the more as we hope at no 
distant date to lay before our readers an estimate of Mr. Butler’s 
contributions to the doCtrine of Evolution. 
A strange oversight, on page ioi, demands the author’s 
attention. It is there said that Sir Humphry Davy discovered 
oxygen. 
Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liver- 
pool (during the Seventy-first Session, 1881-82). No. 
XXXVI. London : Longmans and Co. Liverpool : D. 
Marples and Co., Limited. 
This volume is rich in excellent matter. For once non-scientific 
articles are in a minority in number. One of them, on the 
“ Revision of the New Testament,” by Dr. Nevins, seems so 
unmistakably theological in its character that we wonder its 
admissibility was not questioned. 
We have first to notice a communication on Fresh-water Mol- 
lusca from Lake Tanganyika, by the Rev. H. H. Higgins. The 
author questions whether in all cases the morphology of the soft 
parts of mollusks affords better indications of blood-relationship 
than does that of the hard parts. He mentions that he has 
personally taken from the Sea of Galilee, and from a stream near 
Jericho, shells resembling those from Lake Tanganyika, and he 
refers to the conjecture that “ the Valley of the Jordan, the Red 
Sea (then closed at the southern end), the Valley of the Upper 
Nile, and the great African lakes formed portions of one vast 
fresh-water lake system in Eocene times.” Some of the shells 
in question, however, imitate marine forms. Mr. Higgins there- 
fore asks whether they are vestiges of a time when Africa was 
submerged. “ If so, we have Mollusca placed in one genus 
which in their pedigree were wide asunder — a converging instead 
of a diverging pedigree.” 
Mr. J. Linton Palmer calls attention to a curious ethnological 
faCt : in the primeval implements hitherto found in the American 
continent the groove or gouge type prevails in the north, and the 
straight-edge or chisel in the south. 
Mr. E. Davies, F.G.S., the President, delivered an Inaugural 
Address on Chemical Force. Its characteristic is a philosophic 
caution. The speaker admits that “ in the simplest chemical 
readtions there is much that we cannot understand. The old 
philosopher, Kanada, knew as much as we ; and Adrishta, the 
Unseen, is still the best name we can give to the chemical force. 
. . . . Nothing must be accepted as articles of scientific faith 
