high in the scale of organization, and do not exhibit the features of an inferior or transitional type.-Pp. 283-285.

EXPLORATION OF CAVERNS IN THE PROVINCE OF PERIGORD, FRANCE.-Within a comparatively recent period the existence of certain caves, rich in fossil remains, has been ascertained in the Province of Périgord, France. They occur chiefly on the banks of tributaries of the river Dordogne, (which reaches the sea a little north of Bordeaux.) During the past year one of these caverns, namely, that of Eyzies, was bought by Messrs. Lartet and Christy, the well-known geologists, and carefully explored.

These gentlemen divided the floor of the cave into compartments, and, with a generosity worthy of all praise, they have sent specimens of the blocks thus obtained, weighing five hundred pounds and upward, to the principal museums in Europe.

The floor of this cavern was found to consist of a compact mass of earth, charcoal, flint weapons and tools, bones, needles, etc., which have been hardened into a solid agglomerate, chiefly by the action of the calcareous droppings from the roof of the cave. This agglomerate, or breccia, as it is technically styled, formed an artificial floor to the cave of various thicknesses, from three inches to ten inches. In fact, the evidence seems complete that the cave in question was for many years the abode of an ancient people, who were accustomed to throw down, or leave upon the floor, the bones and other remnants of their feasts, very much in the manner of the Esquimaux and other savages of the present day. With these, weapons and industrial implements naturally became mingled. The animal bones found were, as in the cave of Bruniquel, principally those of the reindeer. . . .

Messrs. Lartet and Christy, from their explorations of this cave, announce the following conclusions: That a variety of the human race inhabited the caves in the region since called Périgord at the same time as the reindeer, the aurochs, and other animals, which are now only found in extreme latitudes; that this people had no knowledge of the use of metals, their only arms and tools being either of broken and unpolished flints, or of bones or horns of animals; that they lived upon the produce of the chase and by fishing; that they had no domesticated animal, neither dog nor cat, else some portions of the bones and sinews that have been found would have been gnawed, and some remains of the dog would have been discovered; and that they were clothed in skins, which were sewn with bone needles and string made out of the sinews and tendons of the legs of their prey.-P. 285.

HUMAN FOSSILS FROM GIBRALTAR.-From two collections of cavern-breccia forwarded to England, nearly four hundred fragments of skulls have been obtained, all presenting signs of very ancient fracture, besides numerous jaw-bones. Most of these cranial fragments are too small to admit of complete cranial restoration; but Mr. Busk, the naturalist, who has the collection in charge, is of the opinion that the lower jaws may be referred to two distinct types of race. "This opinion," he says, "is strengthened by the circumstance that some of the other bones of the skeletons present very remarkable distinctive characters. Thus, among the numerous leg and thigh bones, belonging apparently to some thirty-five individuals, are many so singular, and as it may almost be said so monstrous in their form, as to have excited the astonishment of all anatomists who have beheld them.-P. 287.

FURTHER HUMAN REMAINS FROM ABBEVILLE, FRANCE.-On April 24, 1864, M. Perthes and Dr. Dubois of Abbeville, found in one of the quarry beds a portion of a human sacrum, fragments of a cranium, and human molar teeth; on the 1st of May they obtained, on digging, further remains; and on the 11th of May, the party of exploration being increased, they turned out from the depth of about fourteen feet a human jaw-bone, nearly perfect, with other bones and some cut flints. On the 7th of June the Abbé Martin, Professor of Geology at the Seminary of St. Riquier, continued the diggings, and took out from a drift bed, at a place which showed plainly by its regular stratification that it had not been disturbed since its original deposition, a human cranium, the frontal bone and the parietal of which were nearly entire, and also two fragments of an upper jaw.

The number of specimens of boues thus collected from the Abbeville beds during the past year amounts to two hundred, and they were all found within an ex

tent of about one hundred and thirty feet. Part of these are of animals. The human remains apparently indicate a very small race of men.-Pp. 288, 289.

Near Pressigny, France, a whole "factory " of flint implements has been found, including "cut nuclei, tomahawks, hatchets, knives, spearheads, and scrapers." A writer in Galignani expresses suspicions at this development. Human fossils have been found in Brazil, "bearing marks of geologic antiquity, intermixed with those of extinct animals." "The form of the skull differs in no respect from the acknowledged American type."

The lake geologists of Switzerland have been measuring the length of the human geologic epoch. The calculation brings out "a duration of about one thousand centuries at least for the last geological epoch, which began immediately after the retreat of the last great glaciers, which was characterized by the presence of the Elephas primigenius and by the appearance of man, and which ended at the beginning of the modern period, the latter having already lasted about one hundred centuries."

Dr. Dawson, of Canada, has found organic remains in the Laurentian rocks earlier than some of the so-called Azoic. Dr. Perry, of London, maintains that granite is not of Plutonian origin. His proof is that the quartz crystal in granite has a specific gravity lower than ever results from fusion. Professor Thury, of Geneva, Switzerland, professes to have discovered a method of producing either sex at will in the production of animals.

Physicists present some discussions on the subject of the constitution of matter which our metaphysicians would do well to note. It has been lately observed by a high authority that physical researches are tending to spiritualize men's views of the system of nature. We quote the following passage from an astronomical paragraph by Sir W. Armstrong, president of the British Association, in Mr. Wells's Annual for 1864:

Not that I speak of particles in the sense of the atomist. Whatever our views may be of the nature of particles, we must conceive them as centers invested with surrounding forces. We have no evidence, either from our sense or otherwise, of these centers being occupied by solid cores of indivisible incompressible matter essentially distinct from force. Dr. Young has shown that even in so dense a body as water these nuclei, if they exist at all, must be so small in relation to the intervening spaces, that a hundred men distributed at equal distances over the whole surface of England would represent their relative magnitude and distance. What then must be these relative dimensions in highly rarefied matter? But why encumber our conceptions of material forces by this unnecessary imagining of a central molecule? If we retain the forces and reject the molecule, we shall still have every property we can recognize in matter by the use of our senses or by the aid of our reason. Viewed in this light, matter is not merely a thing subject to force, but is itself composed and constituted of force.-P. 325.

A Treatise on Astronomy. By ELIAS LOOMIS, LL.D., Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in Yale College; Author of " An Introduction to Practical Astronomy," and of a Series of Mathematics for Schools and Colleges. 8vo., pp. 338. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

Of elementary works on astronomy there is an abundance. Yet there are few teachers of this science in our colleges, we think, who have not felt the want of an accurate text-book adapted to the intelligence of the mass of their pupils. The best rational exposition of the methods and results of astronomical investigation, unencumbered by mathematical formula, in our language, is undoubtedly to be found in Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy. But its size and its diffuseness in both language and illustration render it exceedingly defective as a text-book. Of American works, while there are several of a very high order of merit, it must be confessed that those which are sufficiently popular in their character to obtain a wide circulation, are generally deficient in the first requisite of a scientific treatise, accuracy. Professor Loomis has aimed, in the volume before us, to supply the want to which we refer. His eminent ability as a scientific man and a writer of text-books is a sufficient guarantee of the manner in which the task is accomplished. The size of the volume is such that it may be read without omissions in the college course. The mathematical discussions are limited, wisely, we think, to those subjects which cannot be distinctly comprehended without them. Wherever it is practicable they are illustrated by simple examples, which will serve to test the learner's familiarity with the principles he has studied. Topics which are of more general interest, such as the constitution of the sun, the condition of the moon's surface, the phenomena of total eclipses of the sun, the laws of the tides, the consti tution of comets, and the results of recent researches respecting binary stars, are treated with as much fullness as the limits of the volume would allow. The language of the work is simple and concise, and the arrangement of its matter is made throughout with special reference to the requirements of the recitation room. We recommend it without hesitation as the best text-book of astronomy for the use of college classes with which we are acquainted.

History, Biography, and Topography.

X.

Harper's Hand-book for Travelers in Europe and the East. By W. PEMBROKE FETTRIDGE. Fourth Year. 12mo., pp. 612. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1865.

This is an enlarged and beautiful edition, done up in pocket-book form, with tuck, and carrying a beautiful railroad map in its pocket.

The author resides most of his time in Europe, and the present volume being two years later than any European hand-book published, presents the latest phases of railroad and other traveling improvements. The railroad map presents a most suggestive measure of the comparative advances in civilization of the different sections of Europe. Paris is the center of a perfect spider's web; Belgium and England are intricately checkered. Central Europe is a gridiron. But Italy is nearly blank. Rome, the mistress of ancient civilization, is pierced with a single black line! So much is the papal worse than the pagan rule. Indeed, the very face of Europe and America shows that the railroad is almost a Protestant Christian institution.

Travels in Central Asia; Being the Account of a Journey from Teheran, across the Turkoman Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian, to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand. Performed in the year 1863. By ARMINIUS VAMBERY, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Pesth, by whom he was sent on this Scientific Mission. 8vo., pp. 493. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1865.

Says a European proverb, "Scrape off the surface of a Russian, and you will find a Tartar beneath." Mr. Arminius Vámbéry being a young Hungarian, profoundly versed in ethnographical lore, was de. sirous to ascertain, by actual linguistic observation, how much Tartar he had beneath his skin. This he properly styles "the moving cause" of his movement into the heart of Central Asia, as we may rightly call the capital city of Independent Tartary. Upon the large and elegant map accompanying the volume, the clear red mark that indicates his path, starting from Teheran in Persia, cutting the south-east corner of the Caspian, describes a northern curve, to the city of Khiva, near the Aral; and thence southward, through Bokhara, terminates at Samarcand, the goal of his pilgrimage. Back from Samarcand, he cuts a similar curve southward, through Karshi and Maymene, clipping the lower edge of Turkomania, through Herat in Afghanistan, thence to Meshed in Persia, and through Northern Persia to Teheran; and thence to London. His double path includes a badly shaped ellipse, stretching lengthwise from Teheran to Samarcand.

Through the entire eastern half of this ellipse, so intense is the barbarian bigotry of the population, that to be known as a European or a Christian would have been sure death to the traveler. His life could be insured only by the profoundest disguise most skillfully maintained. Mr. Vámbéry being not a religious but a scientific missionary, felt himself no way hampered by the strictest of ethics. He assumed the character and dress of a dervish, and with the profoundest hypocrisy of manner, dress, and language, successfully

deceives every man he meets, except, of course, his reader. The universal Church of Science, while prescribing strictest truth within its own domains, binds not itself to faith with outside barbarians. With the rarest presence of mind when endangered by the suspicions of the natives aroused by his questionable traits, with the utmost fertility of invention, and with the most unparalleled audacity, Mr. Vámbéry, "splendidé mendax," literally lied his way into the heart of Asia. Induced by the necessities of the deepest disguise, he labored to outdo his brother dervishes in rags and vermin, plastering himself several strata deep with mud and filth, bawling passages of the Koran "for hours like one possessed," enacting religious paroxysms, and pronouncing mock benedictions upon humble devotees. His truthfulness to his European friends is, however, attested by the unique simplicity of his narrative, as well as by the severe ruthlessness with which he divests the oriental countries and cities of the halo of poetry with which they have been invested by oriental bombast reproduced in the English language in Moore's brilliant rhyme-romance of Lalla Rookh. The results of Mr. Vámbéry's travels in the present volume are divided into two parts. The first embraces the narrative of his adventures, and the second a political survey of the regions in which they transpired. Asia, the oldest of the continents, is yet a land of unpenetrated mysteries. It is yet to open to the missionary and to the merchant, to the telegraph and the railroad, to all the grand results of modern civilization. Mr. Vámbéry will ever be memorable as the first pioneer to her central point. The scientific fruits which he gathered in his tour are still reserved in his own possession; to be shaped, in time, for future publication. The ethnographical scholar will wait with interest for his next announce

ment.

Domestic Life in Palestine. By MARY ELIZA ROGERS. 12mo., pp. 436. Cincinnati: Poe & Hitchcock. 1865.

She sees with Her opportunities

Miss Rogers has a story to tell, and she tells it well. an artist's eye, and describes with an artist's pen. for correct observation were ample. For four years she resided with her brother, Mr. E. T. Rogers, then the popular British Consul at Haifa, and afterward at Damascus, and was without difficulty introduced into the social life of the East. She accompanied him in various expeditions into the interior, and saw society in all its phases from Bethlehem to Nazareth.

Miss Rogers has given us a very interesting book. It is not a book of Travels, nor a volume of illustrations of Scripture, nor a scientific account of that wonderful land; although it has enough of