Notices of Books. 
257 
1878.1 
Organic Evolution we do not dispute, and Mr. Maclaren may 
have rendered some service by calling the attention of enquirers 
in that direction. But to find out such evidence and to ascertain 
its value will require the labour of many years — perhaps of more 
than one life-time. 
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian 
Institution. Washington : Government Printing Office. 
i 8 77 - 
In the official reports with which this volume commences we 
find an announcement that the National Museum, which has 
hitherto been merged in the Smithsonian Institution, is about to 
be placed on a distindl basis, it being considered that the two 
establishments have now reached such a state of development 
that they can scarcely be continued under one common organi- 
zation. The appropriation for the maintenance of the Museum 
now amounts to 20,000 dollars annually. 
Among the memoirs included in the volume are the eloge on 
Gay-Lussac, delivered by Arago ; a biographical sketch of the 
present Emperor of Brazil; a paper by Mr. W. B. Taylor, of 
Washington, on “ Kinetic Theories of Gravitation.” After re- 
viewing all the speculations which more or less direCtly bear 
upon the subjedl from the days of Dr. R. Hooke down to the 
present time, the author, in summing up, remarks that every 
kinetic system suffers from the “ culminating vice” of an 
“ utterly reckless violation of any rational conception of the 
conservation of energy.” He continues : “ And yet, remarkably 
enough, the ostensible impulse and occasion of such creeds 
have usually been a strong veneration for this much-abused 
principle and the consciousness of a special mission to restore 
and to vindicate its neglecffed authority ! Not unfrequently the 
vibrations communicated to the telegraphic aether by a trembling 
atom have been supposed to be transmitted unimpaired to that 
or to other atoms and back again in endless and magnificent 
cycles of perpetual motion. And as there is no limit to the 
vis viva which such a medium may conserve within its bound- 
less bosom, such projectors have the Bank of the Infinite on 
which to draw in every dynamic emergency, without the fear of 
a depleted treasury, and without any necessity being felt for inquir- 
ing too nicely into the balance of the depositor’s account. And 
thus, as Leray has intimated, suns and stars are maintained 
blazing for ever on a borrowed capital of motion.” 
In opposition to such views the author maintains that we 
have, from experience, no reason for believing the aether to be in 
any case a source of energy. 
There is also a long and not unimportant paper by Prof. G. 
Pilar, on the “ Revolutions of the Crust of the Earth.” The 
VOL. VIII. (N.S.) 
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