Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/141

Rh heretical and dangerous, but are now to be found in every class-book and are taught in every school."

Dr. Brunton's volume is not at all of the controversial form, and is quiet in tone and most conciliatory in spirit. It is besides a very instructive book, his plan being not so much to argue his questions in a formal way as to give the information and illustrate the facts that will enable the reader to draw his own conclusions.

The method of the book is somewhat novel. It is divided into two parts, which are so separate and so different that the reader is left long in doubt as to their connection or what they have to do with each other. The three introductory chapters are devoted to an account of Bible lands, or the countries of Egypt and Palestine, and the Exodus of the Hebrews. This part of the work is of extreme interest, because of the freshness of its restatement of old facts in the light thrown upon them by later knowledge. The countries of Egypt and Palestine are regarded as typical specimens of regions where the climatic conditions were entirely different, so that abundance prevailed in one while famine desolated the other, and drove a starving people to one of those wholesale migrations which have played so important a part in the world's history. Ancient Egyptian life has been dwelt upon to fix attention upon an old civilization as a landmark of the world's progress, so that the long centuries which have since intervened might introduce to the conception of geological time. The influence of circumstances upon character and the law of the hereditary transmission of qualities are variously exemplified by the Israelitish race.

Fifty pages of the work are consumed in this preliminary discussion, and then the next 286 pages are devoted to such a general survey of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, in the present structures and affinities of living species and in the relations of the earth's historic life displayed by fossils, as brings out in an impressive manner the truth of the doctrine of evolution. This portion of the work is highly instructive, from the richness of its facts and the copiousness of the pictorial illustrations which help their interpretation. But it is mainly valuable, of course, as showing the extent, the variety, and the harmony of the proofs that can be given of the law of development. This law being established, the author proceeds in Lecture XVI to consider "The Mosaic Record and Evolution." There is here no straining after effect, but it is shown how the honest believer in the Scriptures need have no real difficulty in interpreting the Biblical text in harmony with evolutional truth. A rigorous literalism can, of course, make a stand here, as it did in the times of the astronomical and geological controversy; but there is a good deal less difficulty with the reconciliation now than there was in the preceding cases. The closing lecture is devoted to individual development, and gives occasion to some practical conclusions and reflections suggested by the subject, which are full of instructive interest.

object of the work reviewed in this report is to ascertain as many facts as possible in relation to the development and actual composition of the stalks and juices of the different varieties of sorghum and corn which can be successfully grown in the United States. The experiments were generally directed to the demonstration of the period at which the juice of each particular variety of sorghum or corn contained the most crystallizable sugar which could be profitably separated. Large sheet plates present graphically the results of 3,601 analyses of thirty-eight varieties of sorghum, eleven varieties of corn-stalks, and a few outside samples of sugar and sirup.

book, the author tells us, was prepared by request, as a practical treatise for the use of general practitioners of medicine. It treats of the anatomy of the parts