Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/578

560 were written with reference to a question set by the Royal Academy of Denmark with reference to the possibility of establishing for an individual isolated in society rules of conduct drawn from his personal nature, and the relation of such rules to those which would be reached from a consideration of society as a whole. These chapters were crowned with the gold medal of the academy.

The lectures with which Sir Archibald Geikie inaugurated the Williams lectureship in Johns Hopkins University, have been published in a book which can be read with unmixed pleasure, entitled The Founders of Geology. In choosing his subject the author was moved by the thought that as his audience would include geologists from all parts of the continent and representing all departments of the science, a general topic of equal interest to all would be the best to present, and that a review of the past, with its successes and its errors, would afford valuable lessons in the future prosecution of the science. Yet it would be impossible to present the whole, even of this one phase of geology, adequately in a single course; and he therefore selected a limited period—that between the middle of the last century and the close of the second decade of the present one, an interval of about seventy years—a period which witnessed the laying of the foundations of geology. Even the whole of this period can not practically be fully covered, wherefore the author limits himself to the recital of the story of a few of the great pioneers, from whose "struggles, their failures, and their successes," it may be indicated how geological ideas and theories gradually took shape. The first chapter treats of the cosmogonists and the beginnings of accurate and detailed observation regarding the earth's crust and its history, with special notice of Guettard and his labors; then the rise of volcanic geology and geological travel, the history of the doctrine of geological succession, and the rise of the modern conception of the theory of the earth and of experimental geology are discussed, with notices of the leading names connected with each phase, closing with an estimate of the influence of Lyell and Darwin. From the whole the three lessons are derived of the varied employments of the most eminent leaders of the science and the small number of "professional" geologists among them; the length of time that may elapse before a fecund idea comes to germinate and bear fruit; and "the absolute necessity of avoiding dogmatism" in geology.

The existence of a rule based on astronomical considerations in the orientation of important buildings was suggested to Mr. Norman Lockyer by the observation of the direction in which the Parthenon is built, and of the many changes in the direction of the temple at Eleusis. Then he was reminded of a tradition that the eastern windows of properly constructed churches in England generally face the place of the sunrising on the festival day of the patron saint. He was thus set upon an inquiry which has been pursued for many years as to whether this is not a veritable rule, handed down from remote antiquity, and exemplified generally in temple architecture. The result of these inquiries is his book, The Dawn of Astronomy. The richest field for such a study was of course found in the