of all justice most, and will, make every allowance for antecedent passion, for blindness, for ignorance, for inadvertence"; and this, Mr. Mivart explains, will apply to that "large proportion of men's actions which can not be freely controlled by them on account of ancestral influences, early associations or intellectual and volitional feebleness." As we read these declarations we begin to find ourselves somewhat at a loss to conceive the kind of person who would really constitute an eligible candidate for the place which Mr. Mivart so far offends ears polite as to mention. However, some do get there, and then they fare according to their deserts. Their great loss consists in being shut out from what theologians describe as "the beatific vision"—that is, from the happiness of heaven; but they have apparently all the means of enjoyment and even of moral improvement open to them which they had on earth, though without hope of ever changing their fundamental state of separation from God.
Waiving all questions as to the reality of the matter which Mr. Mivart discusses, we venture to express the opinion that the view he puts forward is far more favorable to the interests of religion, and much better adapted to produce moral thoughtfulness, than the heretofore current notions, which no amount of sophistical ingenuity can torture into conformity with justice, benevolence, or reason. So far we extend to the distinguished naturalist and, as it would appear, not inexpert theologian our sympathy, and bid him Godspeed.
The Index to Volumes I to XL of The Popular Science Monthly, announced as in preparation some months ago, has been completed, and up to March 25th about fifty pages had been put in type. It will make nearly three hundred pages, and, as setting the type for such a book is slow work, we must ask a little more patience from the many who have been anxiously inquiring for the volume.
A Handbook of Pathological Anatomy and Histology. With an Introductory Section on Post-mortem Examinations and the Methods of Preserving and Examining Diseased Tissues. By Francis Delafield, M. D., LL. D., and T. Mitchell Prudden, M. D. Fourth edition. New York: William Wood & Co. 1892. Pp. xvii+3 to 715.
The fourth edition of this standard work has an increase of more than one hundred pages of text, with the addition of seventy-six engravings, while many portions of the book have been rewritten, so that it may include the principal discoveries that have been made in pathology since the publication of the third edition in 1889.
In the section on the methods of preparing pathological specimens for study there has been added a description of the phloroglucin method of decalcifying bone, which is one of the best that can be used, and there is also a description of the satisfactory method of hardening tissues by Lang's corrosive-sublimate solution.
The chapter on the composition and structure of the blood has received important additions in the description of oligocythæmia and of the determination of the presence of the micro, macro, and poikiloeytes, as well as a description of the polynuclear neutrophile and eosinophile leucocytes and lymphocytes; and there is a section on the methods of examination necessary to study these various forms.
One of the most important additions to the volume is the section on hypertrophy, hyperplasia, regeneration, and metaplasia; the authors calling attention to the pathological importance of a knowledge of caryocinesis, because a recognition of mitotic figures may permit a decision regarding the particular cells involved in the formation of new tissue.
The chapter on inflammation has been practically rewritten and rearranged, the subjects of tubercular and syphilitic inflammations being now considered under the sections relating to the diseases producing them.