tigators, and assures the continuance of indefatigable research. Dr. Ferrier's investigations led him to certain important conclusions regarding the localization of functions in the brain, which have been approved by some physiologists, and criticised by others, although all agree as to the value of his skillful and well-directed experiments. The chief object of this volume is to present the author's views of the bearing of his experiments, although it contains a concise and well-digested account of the functions of the cerebro-spinal system in general, with the view more especially of pointing out the mutual relations between the higher and the lower nerve-centres. Dr. Ferrier's work was elaborately reviewed and in some respects adversely criticised by Mr. George Henry Lewes in two numbers of Nature. We have no space to state the points in issue, but will give his estimate of the work as presented in the closing passage:
"My space is exhausted, and I have not been able to do more than criticise the main topic of Dr. Ferrier's book—and this not with the fullness which its importance demands. But if I have shown grounds for regarding the hypothesis of voluntary centres in the cortex as at any rate far from proved, and in doing so have had to adopt an antagonistic attitude throughout my review, I should not be just to him, nor to my own feelings of gratitude, if I did not, in concluding, express a high sense of the value of his work, full as it is of suggestions, and rich in facts, which no counter-facts can set aside. It will long remain a storehouse to which all students must go for material. It may be the starting-point of a new anatomy of the brain."
The Carlyle Anthology. Selected and arranged with the Author's Sanction. By Edward Barrett. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 386. Price, $2.
It was an excellent idea to get together in one compact volume the best thoughts of Carlyle, for there is a better and worse in his writings, as well as in those of all other authors. He has produced a lot of books in his day, unequal among themselves, but all containing, here and there, brilliant and powerful passages, well deserving to be thus separated and brought together for entertainment and edification at odd hours. We suspect, indeed, that Carlyle will be longer remembered for these strokes of extraordinary insight than on account of his elaborate works, in the great bulk of which there is a prodigious amount of wordiness—a fault which he so hated in other people. His works are mountainous, brilliant with gilded peaks, but with great stretches of valley between. It was not a bad idea of Barrett's to truncate the upper cones, and get the peaks all together in a single book, and, if Carlyle approves of it, as he says he does, and must do, all readers will be pleased.
New Encyclopædia of Chemistry. Chemistry, Theoretical, Practical, and Analytical, as applied to Arts and Manufactures. On the Basis of Dr. Muspratt's Work. Parts XV. to XX. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. Price, 50 cents per number.
We have already referred to this important work in very commendatory terms, and we may add that its character is well sustained to the later issues. It is not so much a dictionary of chemistry, in which the science is pulverized into a great number of fragments, and each placed under its alphabetical head, as a work in which the great leading subjects of chemical manufacture are taken up in succession, and treated in elaborate and exhaustive essays. The work is hence in no sense a rival of Watt's "Dictionary of Chemistry," which deals with the pure science rather than its practical applications to art and manufacture. The last installments treat of the subjects of dyeing and calico-printing, electro-metallurgy, enamels, ether, explosives, preservation of food, fuel, and gas. These topics are considered with fullness, and brought up to the latest results of scientific investigation.
Archology; or, the Science of Government. By S. V. Blakeslee, Oakland, California. New York and San Francisco: A. Roman & Co. Pp. 164. Price $1.25.
This is a very good little essay on government, but there is hardly enough science in it to justify the author in inventing a new term to describe it. He points out the great strides of the modern physical sciences, and contrasts with them the little that has been done of this kind in the fields of abstract thought, "especially in the all-important science of government."
