full grant would be earned, and nothing could be obtained from other subjects. It seemed to him, however, that the passes in reading and writing ought not to be made so difficult, but that three-quarters of the children should pass. No wonder that under those circumstances the Duke of Devonshire's Commission had reported that the present system had "unfortunately narrowed the instruction given in elementary schools, and, together with the lower standard consequently adopted in the training and examination of pupil-teachers, and the curtailment of the syllabus of the training colleges, exercises a prejudicial

effect on the education of the country."

As to the question of expense for apparatus, Sir John Lubbock showed that this need be no obstacle; fully recognizing that the kind of science to be taught must be no word knowledge, but a practical acquaintance Schoolmasters had on more than one occasion said to him that it was impossible for them to teach science, because they had not the funds necessary to purchase apparatus, set up a laboratory, &c. Now, no doubt, much money might be profitably laid out in this way, but it was not necessary to do so. Mr. Tuckwell, who spoke from personal experience, said in a paper read before the British Association in 1871, that "it ought to be more widely known for how very small a sum sufficient apparatus can be obtained to teach natural history and experimental science. A laboratory can be fitted up for twenty boys at a cost of little more than 20%, while each boy's private stock of glass and test solutions need not cost more than 8s. per annum. Botanical flower-trays, containing eighteen bottles, may be bought for half-a-crown; electrometers, telescopes, polariscopes, models of pumps, and pulleys, may be made, by a little instruction, by the boys themselves, who will learn in their construction far more of the principles which they involve than could ever be instilled into their minds by the choicest products of the shop."

with the actual facts of nature.

the third part of his "travels" in those countries in 1870 and 1871.

In it will be found a complete résumé of the present state of our knowledge of the zoology and botany of those distant and inhospitable regions, and a chapter on what is known of their geology.

The mammals of these northern climes are few in

number, consisting chiefly of seals and whales. The terrestrial mammal-fauna comprehends only two species of lemming (Myodes torquatus and M. obensis): the arctic fox, common fox, and wolf and sea-bear among the carnivores, and a single ruminant-the reindeerseven species in all. The birds are more numerous, the land-birds being only ten in number out of a total of though here again the marine species far predominate, fifty. Amongst the former we are surprised to see recorded as an accidental visitor the Hoopoe, usually considered as rather an inhabitant of the tropics, but of which a single straggler was captured in Southern Spitzbergen by a merchant-vessel in August 1868. Reptiles

are conspicuous only by their absence in Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, but of fishes thirty species are recorded as having been obtained on various parts of the coast, all belonging to known forms either of the Atlantic or of the waters of Northern Asia.

The invertebrates of Spitzbergen are treated of more concisely by Herr v. Heuglin; but lists are given of the species of the different orders, and many references to previously published papers and works bearing upon this subject are added.

The account of the flora of Spitzbergen is mainly founded on Malmgren's paper, published in 1862, in the

Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stock

said it was often urged that in science the very methods of teaching were still under discussion. This, however,

was an unavoidable incidence of a commencement. It would be remedied by experience, and could be remedied by experience only. Mr. Arnold truly said that "when scientific physics have as recognised a place in public instruction as Latin and Greek, they will be as well taught."

Sir John Lubbock also referred to the miserable pittance which has as yet been allotted to research in science by our Universities; but as we have referred to this point so recently, we need not dwell upon it here. Altogether, we hope that this moderate and wise, but uncompromising address may give one more strong impulse to the already widespread feeling that we cannot with safety delay much longer in giving to science the place which it ought to hold in the educational system of the country.

by Anderson, Fries, and Nyström. The Phanerogams The botany of Nova Zembla and Waigatsch Island is enumerated are 117, the Cryptogams upwards of fifty. separately treated of. Our knowledge of this subject is based upon the excellent researches of Von Baer and Trautvetter, published at St. Petersburg, and a paper of Blytt's, of Christiania. On these islands 146 Phanerothe latter a certain number of new species are described gams and 144 Cryptogams have been discovered. Among in the present work by Prof. Ahle, of Stuttgardt.

The geological chapter, which concludes the volume, is based upon the well-known researches of the Swedish naturalists Lovén, Torell, Blomstrand, and Nordenskiold, who have laboured so long and so diligently upon this subject.

We can recommend Herr v. Heuglin's work as a very convenient handbook for the use of future visitors to the Northern Seas, and of explorers of those newly discovered lands of which we are now hearing so much.

HECKEL'S DEVELOPMENT OF MAN* Anthropogenie oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen; gemeinverständliche wissenschaftliche Vorträge, von Ernst Hæckel. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1874.)

II.

N tracing the genealogy of our race, Prof. Hæckel, while availing himself of the gradual changes in the fauna of the earth during geological periods, and of the * Continued from p 5.

gradation of living animal forms, takes as the most important clue in his difficult task the facts of human embryology. This close connection is constantly kept in view, and by its aid not only does] he trace, as in the twenty-second chapter of his "Schöpfungsgeschichte," the philogeny of man as a compound organism (Person), but extends the same process to the separate organs of the human body and the faculties of the human mind. The chapters which are occupied by this investigation are the most interesting in the book, full of ingenious suggestions, and well repaying the reader who brings a sound knowledge of embryology and comparative anatomy to their study.

The genealogical tree here constructed is briefly as follows:-First, a Cythode (Moner), itself the product of inorganic matter, passed in the Laurentian ages from being a component of primordial sea-slime (Plasson, represented by existing Bathybius) to a separate unicellular or amoeboid form. Several of these plastids next formed a colony by cell-division (Morula), which in subsequent ages became covered with cilia, differentiated into an ectoderm and entoderm, and provided with a mouth (Gastræa), a form represented in sponges and other invertebrates and in Amphioxys, but omitted in the ontogenesis of man, or represented by the Blastosphere. Each of the primitive layers subdivided into two, and between the latter was formed the cœlum, or body cavity (vermiform stage, protuchous or aproctous). Next was developed the notochord in a form related to the existing ascidian and amphioxous larvæ. The vertebral character being thus attained, our ancestors passed through stages now represented by the lampreys and the sharks, during the ages which ended the archæolithic period. While the Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian formations were taking place, the Amphibian stage was passed, and the succeeding development in the Trias epoch was from this to a protamniotic form, distinct from that which gave birth to the sauropsidan stem, and leading directly to the mammalian. When the last strata of chalk had been laid down, a marsupial form was changing into one now represented by the lemurs. Lastly, the Tertiary period witnessed the development of various gradations of catarrhine Primates, from one of which the earliest men directly sprung.

The genealogy thus constructed (which is almost exactly the same as those Prof. Hæckel has before published) is plausible enough, and if such speculations come under what the late M. Elie de Beaumont called "la science mousseuse," they certainly have their use in directing and stimulating inquiry. But is this the But is this the way to introduce the results of biology to a popular

audience?

In the first place, the theory of evolution itself is neither so certain nor so complete as persons who take their knowledge from these lectures alone would be led to suppose. Our author is astonished at Rütimeyer's comparison of "Darwinism" to a religion. But as held by its illustrious author and by the ablest biologists both in Germany and England, it is very much like a rational theology for it is a theory which only pretends to be a more or less probable explanation of facts, which is held

liable to correction from fresh facts and with tolerance for less probable explanations. But in these lectures evolu

tion is no longer a reasonable belief, but a fanatical and intolerant Aberglaube.

Again, granting that evolution by some means has taken place, and that natural selection is a true cause of evolution, it is not the only cause. Modifications of it, like the so-called "Mimicry" of Bates and Wallace, have already been discovered, and no doubt others will be. The effect of Sexual selection, a struggle for existence of the race as distinct from the individual, would not have been guessed had not Mr. Darwin himself proved it: and it often modifies the working of Natural selection.

Lastly, if we accept evolution and so-called materialism in its widest sense, the logical results will not be what Prof. Hæckel assumes. For these, like all other scientific theories, deal only with secondary causes; and when we have traced back mind and matter alike to cosmic vapour, the question still recurs, to what was that matter with its potential functions due? In Protogenes, or in the impregnated human ovum,

The thread of Life untwisted is

Into its first consistences.

Yet the mysteries of growth, of movement, and of genera tion are not less but more mysterious than when less nakedly exposed in higher organisms. Scientific investigation, in the hands of Darwin, Fritz Müller, Dohrn, and Hackel, has told us much and will tell us more of how this world has come about; but when men inquire into its final cause, the human race will have made a step back towards its primordial slime.

cease to

Leaving these general considerations, one is reminded by Prof. Hæckel's attempt at a human philogeny of the many fallacies which beset the application of the general theory of evolution to this particular instance.

When the dogma is accepted that “ ontogeny is a recapitulation of philogeny," we find that the individual development of man and his ancestors is far from completely known. The embryology, for instance, of Monotremata and the Ganoids, including Ceratodus, is a blank. Only the other day Mr. Balfour's admirable observations on the development of sharks came to disturb what seemed to be a universal law of vertebrate embryology, and the origin of the urogenital organs is still confessedly obscure. Yet Prof. Hæckel, while candidly admitting this last difficulty, practically assumes one and not the best-supported view to be correct. On the strength of it he teaches that the kidneys are homologous with sebawith the water-vascular canals of other worms; and that ceous glands, with the segmental organs of Annulata,* and sperm-cells belong to the exoderm, germ-cells to the endoderm. Again, the placental classification which forms the basis of the genealogical tree on p. 493 has been always open to grave objection, and has now been decisively contradicted by the researches of M. Alphonse

Milne-Edwards and Prof. Turner.

Again, even when the development of an animal is fully made out, it is often so abridged and distorted an epitome of its ancestry, that we may easily interpret it wrongly, and we have at presentino signs to tell us when the clue begins to fail.

But a third and still more serious difficulty in constructing philogenies is the well-known incompleteness

*Whether this ingenious hypothesis of Gegenbaur will be confirmed on other grounds is, of course, a different question.

of the geological record; and, unluckily for the genealogy of man, the very chapter we most need, that of the Worms and primitive Tunicata, is the one most hopelessly lost.

All this does not prove that no attempt should be made to trace back the descent of man and other animals by such lights as we have, but it does seem to show that the results are too uncertain to be set forth as ascertained facts in popular lectures.

Strange as it now seems, a generation ago many of the best zoologists spent their time in arranging animals according to various systems of metaphysical origin. The speculations of Oken and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, of Forbes and Macleay, read now like the controversies of the schoolmen. The archetypal skeleton was drawn in many forms (and often in several colours), and almost as many compound terms were invented as those of Prof. Hæckel; but all these fancied systems have passed away, or only exist as relics to encumber the ground. Does not their fate suggest misgivings as to the fate of the genealogical trees which are now so luxuriant ?

In conclusion I will quote the words of one who will not be suspected of sharing the prejudices of those ecclesiastical newspapers which appear to be responsible for many of the defects in Prof. Hæckel's lectures.

"Of all kinds of dogmatism the materialistic is the most dangerous, because it denies its own dogmatism, and appears in the garb of science; because it professes to rest on fact, when it is but speculation; and because it attempts to annex territories to the domain of Natural Science before they have been fairly conquered."*

There is not much in the book of directly scientific interest. Sir Samuel went over very nearly the ground

terests of science.

he had traversed before, and which he has so well and fully described in his "Albert N'yanza and "" Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia ;" and he kept so faithfully and unswervingly in view the noble errand on which he set out, that he had little opportunity to attend to the inThe heroic Lady Baker, however, made large botanical collections throughout the journey, which she presented to the Khedive on her arrival in Cairo, and Sir Samuel informs us that Lieut. Baker made considerable topographical observations. Moreover, although the expedition had no scientific object in view, its purpose was eminently conducive to the interests of

I have endeavoured to represent the sense of the following passage from Virchow ("Gesammelte Abhandhungen," p. 18):-"Es giebt einen materialistischen Dogmatismus so gut wie einen kirchlichen und einen idealischen, und ich gestehe gern zu dass der eine wie die anderen reele Objecte haben können. Allein sicherlich ist der materialistische der gefährlichere weil u. s. w."

science, seeing that until the demoralising traffic in slaves is suppressed, we can never hope to obtain a thorough knowledge of the interesting region around the Upper Nile of its geography, its ethnology, and its natural history; and therefore, although the great object which Baker had in view seems to have been thwarted through the pusillanimity of the Egyptian Government, he deserves the greatest credit for having proved that with skill, determination, and adequate means—and his means were very inadequate the journey from Cairo to the Albert N'yanza might be accomplished in a very short time.

We think it would be difficult to conceive of a leader better fitted than Sir Samuel Baker to accomplish the task which the Khedive commissioned him to do. His work is a practical commentary on the vigorous and truthful lines of Tennyson :

"O well for him whose will is strong!

He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:

For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,
Nor all calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,

That, compass'd round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd."

Sir Samuel estimates that at least 50,000 persons are annually captured to be sold as slaves, and it would be safe to say that several thousands more are massacred in effecting the capture of these; the atrocities practised by the slave-hunters are almost incredible. It was to suppress this lamentable state of matters that Sir Samuel Baker was commissioned, on April 1, 1869, by the well-intentioned and enlightened Khedive of Egypt, who gave him full powers as to equipment. To accomplish this purpose it was necessary to annex the whole Nile basin, and to establish a legitimate trade in the barbarous countries which had hitherto been scourged with this infamous traffic. So far as Sir Samuel could carry out his plans, the equipment of the expedition was admirable in every detail, down to the magic lantern, the wheels of life, and the magnetic battery, which last was in constant requisition among the tribes of the Upper Nile, and was a perpetual source of amusement to the members of the expedition and of wonder to the natives.

The

It would be impossible, in the space at our disposal, to give any adequate idea of the work of the expedition. From the very first Sir Samuel met with obstructions and delays that would have induced any less patient and less determined man to abandon it altogether. Egyptian Government had undertaken to furnish a large number of boats, besides steamers and an adequate military force, for the expedition, which, it was arranged, would start in June 1869. It was with the greatest difficulty that a start was made on the 29th of August, when two of the parties proceeded up the Nile, one to go direct by river to Khartoum, and the other to land at Korosko and march across 400 miles of desert to the same place; with the latter was the heavy machinery and sections of steamers carried by a regiment of camels. Sir Samuel himself set out from Suez on Dec. 11 for Souakim, thence to Berber on the Nile, and in a diahbeeah to Khartoum. Here, in accordance with orders which had been sent on months before, he expected a fleet of vessels to be ready

to convey the expedition up the Nile, but was coolly informed by the Governor-General that "it was impossible to procure the number of vessels required; therefore he had purchased a house for me, as he expected I should remain that year at Khartoum, and start in the following season."

This was certainly disheartening; it was evident that the expedition was unpopular, and that although the Khedive earnestly wished the suppression of the trade, there was scarcely another man in the country but thought it was his interest to support it; thus the queller of the evil had to fight against tremendous odds. After inconceivable difficulty a small fleet was got together, a force of 1,400 infantry and two batteries of artillery mustered, and everything ready for a start by Feb. 8, 1870, although the desert party under Mr. Higginbotham had not yet come up. Out of the military force, Baker selected forty-six men, who were known as the "Forty Thieves," owing to their light-fingered propensity, of which, however, they were soon cured, and became ultimately a loyal band of well-disciplined braves, who contributed greatly to the success of the expedition.

On Feb. 16 the expedition reached the Sobat junction, which river brings an immense body of yellowish water to the Nile, colouring the latter for a great distance. The Bahr Giraffe was reached next day, and here the expedition met with new difficulties which seemed likely enough to compel it to turn back. Sir Samuel says

"The Bahr Giraffe was to be our new passage instead of the original White Nile. That river, which had become so curiously obstructed by masses of vegetation that had formed a solid dam, already described by me in 'The Albert N'yanza,' had been entirely neglected by the Egyptian authorities. In consequence of this neglect an extraordinary change had taken place. The immense number of floating islands which are constantly passing down the stream of the White Nile had no exit; thus they were sucked under the original obstruction by the force of the stream, which passed through some mysterious channel, until the subterranean passage became choked with a wondrous accumulation of vegetable matter. The entire river became a marsh, beneath which, by the great pressure of water, the stream oozed through innumerable small channels. In fact, the White Nile had disappeared. A vessel arriving from Khartoum in her passage to Gondoroko would find, after passing through a broad river of clear water, that her bow would suddenly strike against a bank of solid compressed vegetation-this was the natural dam that had been formed to an unknown extent the river ceased to exist.

"It may readily be imagined that a dense spongy mass which completely closed the river would act as a filter: thus, as the water charged with muddy particles arrived at the dam where the stream was suddenly checked, it would deposit all impurities as it oozed and percolated slowly through the tangled but compressed mass of vegetation. This deposit quickly created mud-banks and shoals, which effectually blocked the original bed of the river. The reedy vegetation of the country immediately took root upon these favourable conditions, and the rapid effect in a tropical climate may be imagined. That which had been the river bed was converted into a solid marsh.

"This terrible accumulation had been increasing for five or six years, therefore it was impossible to ascertain or even speculate upon the distance to which it might extend. The slave-traders had been obliged to seek another route, which they had found vid the Bahr Giraffe, which river had proved to be merely a branch of the White Nile, as I

had suggested in my former work, and not an independent river."

On Feb. 18 the fleet commenced to push its way against the strong current of the Bahr Giraffe, but had not made much progress when it was met by obstructions which had shut up the original channel; day after day was the river found to be choked up with a mass of vegetation—" sudd," Sir Samuel calls it-which with infinite labour had to be cleared away by all hands working with cutlasses and knives, to allow the vessel to pass through. The cutting through of this was dreadfully trying to the men; the poisonous effluvia permanently disabled many; it was, besides, a sore hindrance to the progress of the expcdition. The end of it was that Sir Samuel was compelled to turn back and wait for a more favourable season when the river would be in stronger volume. The retreat was commenced on April 3. The distinguishing feature of the country at this part of the Bahr Giraffe is the innumerable hills of the white ant, rising to heights of 8 and 10 ft., and numerous herds of the antelope Damalis senegalensis are met with.

A very well-organised encampment was formed some distance below the Sobat junction, which ultimately developed into a pretty town and busy market-place, to which Sir Samuel gave the name of "Tewfikeeyah."

A start was again made on Dec. 11, and after scarcely less labour, which disheartened and told on the health of nearly everyone but Baker himself, who seems throughout to have had a charmed life, the broad bosom of the great White Nile was reached on March 11, 1871, and the fleet arrived at Gondokoro on April 15, having taken twenty months to do what on Sir Samuel's return journey was easily accomplished in three. The powers of Baker Pacha were by his commission to expire in four years from April 1869, so that he had now only two years in which to accomplish the great purpose of his mission. He had not, however, been idle on his route from Khartoum to Gondokoro, as by various means he had managed to inspire the slavehunters with a wholesome fear of himself, and had liberated several cargoes of slaves, to the great astonishment of the poor wretches themselves.

Sir Samuel found a great change in the river since his previous visit. The old channel was choked with sandbanks, new islands had been formed in many places, and it was impossible for the vessels to approach the old landing-place. The country around had, moreover, been swept of villages and inhabitants, who had been driven for refuge on the numerous low islands of the river. All that remained of the old mission station of the

Austrian missionaries was an avenue of large lemontrees. Sir Samuel landed a little below the site of Gondokoro, and lost no time in making himself and his companions as comfortable as circumstances would permit, forming a large encampment, and instituting an extensive system of cultivation. Indeed, wherever he went he attempted to instil a love of agriculture among the natives, as he did among his own people, giving away large quantities of seeds, accompanying the gifts with instruction as to the enormous benefits to be derived from cultivation. But his troubles multiplied upon him. He found the Baris, whose tribes occupy most of the district around his station, while professing the greatest friendliness, utterly hostile to the objects of the expedition; their minds had been

poisoned against him by the machinations of the demoniacal Abou Saood, the representative of the great slaving firm of Agad & Co. of Khartoum, who had obtained from the Governor-General of Soudan a monopoly of the trade of all the Upper Nile district, extending over an area of 90,000 square miles. The great majority of his own officers and men, moreover, he found to be hostile to the purpose of the expedition, some of them being even secretly in league with the slave-traders. It was only by the exercise of rigid discipline and almost superhuman patience that between the hostile and treacherous tribes around and the "foes of his own house," the whole expedition did not fall to pieces. He was at last compelled in self-defence to fight the native tribes, and one

cannot but be struck with admiration at the skill with which he, with a handful of men-and the "Forty Thieves" were the only soldiers he could really depend uponmanaged to keep his myriad enemies at bay. Happily he did ultimately succeed in convincing the natives that his intentions were earnest and disinterested, and before his return north he did succeed in thwarting the machinations of his great enemy Abou Saood, and clearing the country for many miles around his route of the slavehunting brigands.

In January 1872 Sir Samuel started southwards with a small force of only about 200 officers and men; for the 1,200 with which he arrived at Gondokoro had by sickness, death, and desertion dwindled down to 500, 300 of

whom he had to leave behind him to garrison Gondokoro. Amid incredible difficulties, the small force reached Fatiko in the beginning of February. Fatiko is on the third parallel N., about seventy miles east of the head of the Albert N'yanza. After a short stay here, Sir Samuel, leaving half of his men behind, marched southwards to Unyoro, the capital of which, Masindi, he reached after disheartening delays and treacheries and equivocations on the part of the native chiefs, on April 25, 1872. The king of the district was Kabba Réga, a son of Baker's wily old friend Kamrasi. He turned out to be a treacherous, greedy, drunken, utterly irreclaimable "young cub," who under the influence of Abou Saood did his best to crumple up the small party which had entrusted themselves to his mercy. Sir Samuel at this, the southern

limit of his journey, did his best to plant the seeds of civilisation and a healthy commerce, but we fear succeeded in making little impression on the besotted Kabba Réga, who in the end, we are glad to find, was beaten by his well-intentioned brother Rionga, with the assistance of Sir Samuel. Here the latter endeavoured to obtain news of and to communicate with Livingstone by means of emissaries from M'Tese's country and other districts to the southward; and here he obtained reports which tended to confirm his conjecture that the Albert, N'yanza extends south to a great distance, and communicates with Tanganyika. Sir Samuel, in his map, has filled in many names of tribes between the two N'yanzas, and we hope that the result of his expedition will be the more thorough exploration of this interesting district.