1876.] 
Notices of Books. 
277 
people are, by the idea that animals formed in this way can be 
less God’s creation than if they were made in any other way. 
The whole history of Science teaches us that men, in all ages, 
have constantly taken false alarm when it has been shown that 
God’s ways are not our ways, and that the universe is governed 
by far wider and more constant lav/s than we had imagined in 
our little minds. But in the same way as the planets are none 
the less held in God’s hand because we now know that it is by 
the law of gravitation that he governs their movements, so every 
plant and animal must be equally His creation, in whatever way 
they have been developed.” 
Surely this passage, equally reverent and philosophical, is a 
noble rebuke to all the frantic denunciation of Evolutionism 
which has been poured not merely from the pulpit and the poli- 
tical press, but which has also, proh pudor ! been vented from 
the professor’s desk and expressed in learned journals. 
To one oversight we beg to draw Miss Buckley’s attention - 
The Roman general who was besieging Syracuse in the days of 
Archimedes was not Maecenas, but Marcellus. 
We can strongly recommend this book, not merely to the 
young, but to many persons of more mature age. It will, we 
think, give them a sounder, worthier conception of the achieve- 
ments, the promises, and the claims of Science. 
Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liver- 
pool , during the Sixty-fourth Session, 1874-5. No. XXIX. 
London : Longmans and Co. Liverpool : D. Marples and 
Co. (Limited). 
The gale which was stirred up by the ever-memorable “ Belfast 
Address ” of Dr. Tyndall seems not yet to have subsided, and is 
blowing very briskly in the pages of the volume before us. 
Three at least of the papers herein-contained— to wit, an address 
“ On the Materialism of Modern Science,” by A. J. Mott, Presi- 
dent ; an essay on “ Potency in Matter,” by the Rev. H. H. 
Higgins; and Part III. of a somewhat buffo memoir on “ Philo- 
sophy without Assumptions,” by T. P. Kirkman, F.R.S. — appear 
to be aimed, more or less diredtly, at Dr. Tyndall, Prof. Huxley, 
Mr. Darwin, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Justice Grove, and those 
mysterious bugbears the “ Materialists.” It was once the rule 
that scientific societies, metropolitan or provincial, should eschew 
metaphysics and theology, for the discussion of which there is 
surely ample room elsewhere ; but at Liverpool it seems this 
prudent reservation, which after all is only a case of the division 
of labour, is thrown aside. 
The very opening sentence of the President’s Address has a 
strange ring about it : — “ The time is near at hand, if we may 
