Alerander Winchell. 97 
world, and especially of the stormy period, antedated (in 1858 
in the ‘‘Michigan Journal of Education”) the publication of 
the similar pictures of Figuier; and his speculations concerning 
the wastage of the land, the final refrigeration of the earth, 
and the sun, and the inevitable running down of the machinery 
of the solar system, were entirely independent; though it later 
appeared that Mayer had preceded him in reference to the doctrine 
of solar cooling, and Sir William Thompson had already an- 
nounced the germ of his doctrine of the ‘‘dissipationof energy.” 
The popular character of the work tempted several ignorant re- 
viewers to speak of it as a compilation, and as something similar 
to the attempts of Hitchcock and Hugh Miller. The Nation re- 
ceived it with that affectation of superior wisdom, and that pomp- 
ous superciliousness which have since been the recognized char- 
acteristics of that conceited journal. With these exceptions the 
work was received with a universal and cordial welcome. From 
his numerous scrap-books the following, from the New York Jide- 
peudent, is selected as a sample of the judgment of the best 
critics. 
But setting aside the engraver’s help toward the rich attractions of this 
volume, and confining ourselves simply to the author’s manipulation of 
words, we should call this a very picturesque volume. Dr. Winchell is a 
learned professor of the sciences of geology, zoology and botany; but 
more than that he is a singular master of the art of telling about these 
sciences. His mind is filled with the poetry of science; he brings his 
heart and his imagination into the field as allies of his analytic faculties; 
and his essays in the popularization of science are realiy extraordinary 
specimens of word-painting. Like Waterhouse Hawkins, Dr. Winchell 
is a popular orator of the facts of natural science; and like Hugh Miller, 
Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, he is also the graphic rhetorician of those 
facts. If any one has supposed that geology is a dry, dull science, he 
can be cured effectually by the perusal of the Sketches of Creation. It 
clothes the dry bones of an august science with the living flesh and 
splendid vestments of poetry. Its rehearsal of the tremendous story of 
the physical universe is a superb prose epic. 
In similar strain wrote the New York Evening Post, the Chicago 
Post, and nearly every other reviewer. The remarkable sale of the 
work combined with these commendations and many friendly let- 
ters, demonstrated that the author had reached the very audience 
for whom he wrote. The publishers accounted to the author for 
4,181 copies sold within the first six months, and they testified 
subsequently that no scientific work ever published in America 
