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Literary Notices.

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century, and unites to a facile flow of words extended observation and study. His chapters upon the Pai Marire War are of unusual interest; and we are glad to find our own opinion confirmed that the Hau Haus are returning in numbers to the profession of Christianity, and the experiment of employing native labour on public works has had a most conciliatory effect. New Zealand certainly appears to have before it a prosperous history; its industries are increasing so rapidly that there is abundance of employment for everybody, and few places present greater inducements to emigrants. The mission. narrative of the book is a record of many trials and more successes, and claims the incipient civilisation of the island as a trophy of Christianity, retarded, rather than promoted, by its earlier acquaintance with Europeans.

Italian Pictures, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the Author of "Spanish Pictures," "Swiss Pictures," &c. London: The Religious Tract Society.

THERE is nothing better of the kind than the volumes in this series, and the last is quite equal to its predecessors. The illustrations are numerous and good, some being engravings from photographs, others from well-known pictures, and the rest are sketches by some of the most accomplished English and Foreign artists. The greater part of the book is devoted to Rome and the Romans, giving an admirable account of the chief Pagan and Christian antiquities, as well as the sights and ceremonies for which modern Rome is famous. The account of Pompeii and Herculaneum is particularly good.

Change of Air and Scene. A Physician's Hints, with Notes of Excursions for Health amongst the Watering Places of the Pyrenees, France (Inland and Seaward), Switzerland, Corsica, and the Mediterranean. By Alphonse Donné, M.D., Rector of the Academy of Montpellier. London: Henry S. King and Co. 1872.

THIS book answers fully to the indication of the prefatory note: "it may be read as a simple book of cheerful travel-talk, or it may be taken as a practical index to the various mineral waters which exercise so powerful an influence in specific ailments." Taken in this latter sense, with its ample "Table of Contents, its Appendices," giving a "List of Mineral Waters," of "Thermal and Maritime Stations with the chief physicians superintending them," and its general "Index," it forms a valuable and almost complete vade mecum for the Continental tourist seeking health. "Taken in the former, it is all it professes to be, and more. He would be a very

stolid man who could travel with this vivacious Frenchman without being excited and pleased with his descriptions of the country and its people, of the baths with their history and their virtues. Dr. Donné

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is not a straightforward traveller, nor a straightforward writer, and to severely logical people both he and his book would be an annoyance. En route he loves to meander, and his style of writing is as picturesque, as meandering, as his course. He revels amid the "beautiful horrors" of nature, and to see them is content to travel in any way he can, and endure a few-a luxurious Englishman would say, not a few-hardships. But Dr. Donné is no devotee at the shrine of modern society with its rigid iron-roads, its excessive nursing, and its extravagant pleasures of the table: Railways are an admirable means of locomotion when you wish to go from one end of the province to the other. . . . Yet I desire to vary my pleasures, and it is monstrous always to ride in a railway-carriage in the midst of noise, without liberty and an opportunity of indulging in the least stroll." scription of a "Roving Trip" on the back of a donkey, which he had bought, is remarkably racy, reminding us of Sterne's manner. We are sorry we cannot give our readers his own account of the exquisite enjoyment he realised while his donkey "animated the solitude" of Of course, he strongly recommends change of air and scene for the promotion or recovery of health, even though this be at considerable expense of comfort. Again we should like to quote, but must not. We must free ourselves from the fascinations of this charming Doctor. He has some quaint notions: "I am convinced, in spite of all my respect for the products of the mind, that man was more intended by nature to hunt and roam through woods and fields than to scratch paper while seated in a chair." But he gives much wholesome and timely advice. Without disparaging in the slightest the skill and resources of the Faculty, he manifestly believes that much may be done to prevent disease, even to cure it, and to invigorate health by hygienic precautions and treatment. And without any pretensions to medical science, so do we.

the way.

Science and Humanity; or, A Plea for the Superiority of Spirit over Matter. By Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1872.

THIS little work is an earnest protest on the part of one well entitled to speak against the materialistic tendencies of modern physical science. The dazzling brilliancy and grandeur of the wonders now disclosed to those who make external nature their special study, seem to render them incapable of apprehending and appreciating the higher and nobler beauties of the nature within. But, unless specially guarded against, this is the result we should expect. It would be difficult to over-estimate the evil resulting from the continuous and exclusive study of sensible objects, as generating habits of thought which, becoming too pervading and influential, surround with an air of unreality all that is not in harmony with themselves. A onesided cultivation, in whatever direction, is not culture in the large and generous sense of the term, and renders the mind liable to error, not

Literary Notices.

511 only in other branches of inquiry, but even in its own special department. With the history of human thought before him, no one can for a moment doubt that much confusion and error have originated in the minds of specialists, whose attention has been unduly absorbed by one class of objects.

Dr. Porter's Plea for the Superiority of Spirit over Matter takes the form of a development of two leading thoughts: man the constructor of the Science of Nature-man himself that which is highest in nature. Regarded under the former aspect, man must be studied in order that natural science, which has its basis in, and is the product of, the human mind, may be accepted with any degree of confidence. Or, to put it in the words of our author, "an inductive science of nature presupposes a science of induction, and a science of induction presupposes a science of man" (p. 27). Again, does not the consciousness of every man present him with a series of facts as real, as inviting, as urgent in their demand for explanation, as any revealed to him by the senses? Are they not a part of nature, calling for the earnest and careful attention of everyone who would study nature in its entirety? We think so, and heartily agree with Dr. Porter when he says: "The science of man and of man's higher nature, in its highest developments, is essential to a science of nature, because nature itself cannot be interpreted except as designed for the uses, and culture, and development of man as a spiritual being " (p. 89).

Enough has been said to indicate the character of this admirable little book. Lest any, knowing the position and pursuits of its author, should be deterred from perusing it by the fear of a one-sided presentation of truth, we add a few of his concluding words which deserve to be noted: "We blame not the scientific discoverer when, fresh from some triumphant experiment, he rejoices in the consciousness of power. We wonder not that he rises from his feat of discovery with a sense of mastery and dominion. Man, by thought, is the king of the universe, so far as by thought he masters its secrets and lays his hands upon its forces. Let him be crowned as king by science, and let no one dispute his right to rule. But, let him never forget that it is only by the right which spirit asserts over matterwhich thought assumes over things-that he has gained this dominion, and that he can extend it only as he learns more wisely how to know and use his own sagacious self-relying mind" (p. 95).

Thoughts on Recent Scientific Conclusions and their Relation to Religion. London: Strahan and Co. 1872.

THE object of the author is to analyse the hypotheses, reasonings, and inferences on which a vast antiquity is claimed for man; and he brings to the work acuteness, candour, and an evident appreciation of the importance of the question.

It has become a habit with a certain class of writers to speak of a man as associated with the mammoth, as an occupant of the

globe during vast geological changes, as though this had been really established. But in truth the majority of the speculations which lead to this conclusion are mere assumptions; many of them of glaring improbability. It is therefore necessary to show that what is fact in paleontology may have a wholly different interpretation. It is argued with much force in this book that the juxtaposition of human reliquia with the bones of the mammoth and the rhinoceros is by no means an evidence of their contemporaneity. The carcasses of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros stichorinus have been found in the frozen mud of Siberia, absolutely preserved so that on their disinterment wolves and bears have devoured them, and it has been affirmed that their flesh has been eaten by Tungusian men. They were doubtless embedded by glacial action; but whether in historic times or not, who shall say? Who can positively affirm the period at which the woolly rhinoceros became extinct? Because their remains are associated with the bones of recent animals, their coexistence in time is surely not established. We may find the knife of a once hungry Tungusian beneath the frozen bones of a mammoth; but the association would fail to establish its antiquity. It is possible that man and the mammoth may have existed together, but their associated remains cannot prove it. The engraving of a mammoth on a small piece of a tusk found in a cave in the Dordogne would suggest the possibility, but nothing more; for the man who made it, may have done so from sources similar to those which Siberia provides. The evidence afforded by flint implements in the gravel must be received with equal caution. The gravels are worn by the action of water. This may rapidly take place; and the occasional recurrence of large blocks points to the action of ice and floods as the cause of their deposition.

On data that are well worthy of perusal the author argues a past union, by means of an isthmus or island, of the Continent with England, in which case the tide would have rushed with great violence and risen to immense heights. From this cause icebergs and floes would have been drifted not only up and down the Channel, but up and down its estuaries and rivers-such for instance as the Somme. These would sometimes pile up and sometimes throw down masses of gravel, bearing with them fossil bones, as of the mammoth of Siberia. If the climate were yielding, the rivers would be flooded; and if, as there is every reason to suppose, men made their flint implements on the banks, they would be borne away with the rushing flood and, of necessity, deposited with the bones of animals long extinct. Many instances could be given in which the action of floods has in less than half a lifetime buried buildings and works of art thirty or forty feet. The case given by M. Boucher de Perthes of the finding of a small ivory statuette of St. Laurence nearly in the same spot and at the same depth with some flint implements in the valley of the Somme, is a case in point. The Neuderthal and Engis skulls, so constantly boasted of as overwhelming evi

Literary Notices.

513 dence in proof of man's enormous age, wholly fail to prove what is claimed, except on a foundation of absolute assumption. The Neuderthal skeleton was found in a cavern on a ledge of rock above the river Düssel; but the cave communicated with the open country a hundred feet above by means of a large rent, so that the loam in which the bones were buried was washed into the cavern by floods; and there is every possibility that the skeleton was driven in by the same means. There is nothing in its position to prove it older than many a Roman skull in our museums. True, its form is peculiar ; but we venture to say not more so than one in every ten thousand that might be taken from the sepulchres of men buried in the civilised world during the last thirty years. Besides, are we to lay it down as a principle that antique man must have an inferior cranial development, and then, because we find a curiously developed skull in circumstances that make its age uncertain, are we to say that it must be enormously old because its type of development is low? On the other hand, the Engis skull, reputed to have far higher claims to antiquity, is of an immensely higher type, being far more nobly developed than the modern Australian savage. But on what are its claims to greater antiquity based? It was associated with the bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and hyena, all of which were of extinct species, therefore it was of enormous antiquity! We decline, with the author of this book, to admit that the present association of such remains proves them contemporaneous. But our objection is immensely strengthened when it is known that a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other species, all of which are still living, were found in the same cave. Why not infer man's age from the living species, and not from the extinct? Clearly they were washed together into the position in which they were found. The absence of human remains in the midst of such vast accumulations of man's products is one of the things for which speculative geology fails wholly to account. But if by floods and glacial action they were swept away, together with the bones of extinct animals, it may be accounted for man might in the great majority of cases escape; whilst his works, left, in his endeavour to save his own life, would be carried swiftly away. Our author suggests that civilisation having in the earlier periods of the world's history proceeded from the warmer zones of the earth, that the civilised peoples by their superior powers in arms and organisation moved slowly westward into Europe, caused the savage aborigines to fly across the Alps into Switzerland or France, where they produced and used in abundance their simple implements of stone, &c., while a high civilisation was comparatively near them. The reasoning and facts throughout the book are of considerable value, and are presented in a concise and practical form. The chapter on "Drafts on the Bank of Time" is specially good. "Darwinism" is very accurately investigated and challenged as it relates to the age of man; and there is a chapter on "Professor Huxley on Darwinism." This, though pertinent and

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