* 884 .] Analyses of Books. 749 
before him, that the days of creation were periods of consider- 
able length, to each of which he assigns the length of 100,000 
years. The reasons assigned for selecting this precise length of 
time seem to us highly fanciful. Thus we are told that the five 
ciphers placed at the right hand of “ the emblematical unit 7,” 
in order to give the earth’s total existence of 700,000, “ may 
symbolise the five senses of all the higher genera of animals, as 
well as the elements of general nature, inanimate and animate 
and organic.” The “ compound elements ” of Nature were aeri- 
form vesicular matter, wind, watery vesicular matter, oleaginous 
vesicular matter, and salt.” 
To find wind classed as an element is indeed bewildering, and 
we ask, though in vain, for any evidence upon which such a 
classification can be built. 
In succeeding chapters we find, however, much more that is 
perplexing. Thus we read of “ the primordial pair of the second 
genus of metals, namely, copper and brass.” “ Taking lead and 
tin, copper and brass, pig-iron and dense iron as being respect- 
ively natural pairs, as I contend that they are, lead, copper, and 
pig-iron were accordingly formulated in the northern hemisphere, 
and tin, brass, and dense iron in the southern.” Leaving out 
any remarks on finding the well-known alloy brass classed with 
simple metals, we may well ask in what part of the southern 
hemisphere it occurs in Nature ? We may likewise ask whether, 
surface for surface, copper is not equally plentiful in the south as 
in the north ? 
The mystery is how any man of evident culture, and of 
thoughtful, intellectual habits, can entertain such notions as we 
find scattered on almost every page of the work before us ? This 
difficulty hinges, doubtless, on the peculiarity of English educa- 
tion, which, until lately at least, allowed the middle and upper 
classes to grow up in the grossest ignorance of things in contra- 
distinction to phrases. 
Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South 
Wales for 1883. Sydney : Richards. London : Trubner 
and Co. 
The Anniversary Address, by the President, Christopher Rol- 
leston, contains a feature which will now appear strange to many 
persons in the Home Kingdom, — we mean the most eloquent 
tribute to the memory of Charles Darwin. So much rubbish — 
we use the word advisedly — is now obtruded upon the world 
that even the death of our foremost savant and the mighty lessons 
of his life are fading into obscurity. We have heard it 
