REVIEWS. 
33 
even while we may differ from the author’s conclusions in one or two in¬ 
stances. Of the British species first described in the Annals of Natural 
History, and now re-published in Walker’s Insecta Britannica, the greater 
number are identified among the indigence of Sweden; and if some 
remain undetermined, it is fairly to be attributed to the brief and insuffi¬ 
cient descriptions given in that original, and not to any defect of conscien¬ 
tious diligence on the part of the Swedish Monographer. The external 
relations of the family, in which Ccelopa is included, have received their 
due attention also, and the allied but excluded genera Orygma Mg. and 
Phycodromia Stnh. are illustrated accordingly; the latter identical with 
Malacomyia , as Stenhammar has rightly conjectured, failing access to the 
original source for verification. Little or nothing has been added, indeed, 
to our previous information touching the internal anatomy,, embryology, and 
economy of the tribe ; nor is this here so much to be regretted, where there 
appears to be such close agreement of habits among the species in general. 
But in regard to the Ephydrinag, it were much to be desired that these 
more obscure points of their Natural History, and on some of which we 
have scarcely any satisfactory documents, had shared in the light which 
Stenhammar has concentrated so industriously on the arrangement of the 
groups and the characteristic of the species. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
Das Leben in derNatur. Bildungs und Entwickelungsstupen dessel- 
ben in Pflanze, Thier und Mensch. Naturhistorisch-philosophisch 
dargestellt von Professor Hinrichs. 8vo. Halle : 1854. 
The works on Natural History which a teeming press offers arrange them¬ 
selves, with rare exceptions, under one of these two denominations—the 
scientific and the popular. Few, indeed, in our age and country, are for¬ 
ward to adopt the title philosophical; whether this be deemed too bold a 
pretension, or that the freaks of some of her professed wooers have gotten a 
bad name for philosophy in this connection. We are disposed to think 
that the latter is nearly the state of the case. It needs not now to in¬ 
quire whether Oken’s obscurities or the perspicuity of Comte have had the 
more to do in producing a jealous feeling in minds that seek truth more 
than system, and cling to faith closer than to philosophy. But if there be a 
so-called philosophy of nature that is materialistic and irreligious, includ¬ 
ing, in the latter, pantheism as well as atheism; is it doubtful that there 
is also a naturalism, not the less irreligious for being ostentatiously anti-phi- 
