relative to the yachts and yachtsmen of other clubs. The purpose of this book is to supply such information, and in addition to furnish portraits and biographical sketches of persons who have been and are prominently connected with yachting, and of those who have been instrumental in promoting the best interests of yachting, as well as illustrations of the various yachts, with descriptions of the same, their dimensions, capacities, and records. A history is given of each yacht club separately, with a statement of what has been done by its members in promoting the sport of yachting. In the first chapter the evolution of the yacht is described from the beginning with the first presumed attempt of the stone-age savage to propel himself upon a log, through the stages of the catamaran, the hollowed log, the dugout, the birch-bark canoe, the more elaborate canoes of the South Seas and the Indian Ocean, Egyptian, classical, and Viking ships, and the stages of modern shipbuilding to the elaboration of the pleasure boat or yacht of to-day. The history of yachting is next given. Leaving out the ships of Amnon in Jacob's time and the Argonauts' ship Argo, which were business vessels, the first yachts proper on record appear to have been those of Ptolemy Philopater of Egypt and Hiero King of Syracuse. After twelve of the broad quarto pages of the book on the history in general, twenty similar pages are devoted to yachting in the United States. Then follow chapters on the Cost of Yachting and Yacht Decorations; Type of Yacht; Centerboard; Rig of Yachts; Speed Records of Sailing Yachts; Trophies; History; Record of Races; descriptions of yachts and biographical sketches of members of the five leading Canadian yacht clubs, and similar information relative to thirty-eight yacht clubs in the United States. The volume contains more than six hundred photo-etchings of yachts and clubhouses, nearly two hundred half-tone vignettes of yachtsmen, more than forty full-page half-tone portraits of commodores, and a hundred full-page photogravures of yachts and clubhouses. A second volume is to contain a leading chapter relative to the introduction of steam on yachts and to various other motor powers; a history of the America's Cup; histories of such yacht clubs as do not appear in the first volume; and photogravures and descriptions of the vessels, cruisers, and war ships of the American Navy.
Natural Theology. By Prof. Sir G. G. Stokes. London: Adam and Charles Black. Pp. 272. Price, $1.50.
The second course of Gifford Lectures is contained in this volume, the first series of which was delivered and published in 1891.
According to the will of the founder, the subject was to be treated as a strictly natural science, without reference to or reliance upon any supposed exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.
Prof. Stokes has made no attempt to fulfill this requisition, stating at the close of the course that the conception is hardly possible to carry out in the manner contemplated, and elsewhere that "any divorce between natural theology and revealed religion is to be deprecated." He justifies his deviation from the plan partly by an appeal to another clause in the foundation, suggesting that the lectures should be promoted and illustrated by different minds.
There are ten addresses in all, the first six giving what arguments are offered in favor of theism. The first topic is the theory of the luminiferous ether and the character of the proof for its credibility, a lesson being drawn from this not to reject what transcends sense experience and to provide a favorable reception for the supernatural. Secondly, it is argued, as the simple laws of motion did not account for inorganic phenomena, but to them were added various theories from time to time, such as gravitation and magnetism, so we are justified in assuming some hypothesis for the construction of living matter which physical laws do not fully explain: this is named the theory of directionism. If also this individual directing power be supposed, by whose influence the bodily molecules are brought together, we obtain some notion of survival after death, since it is not subject to physical dissolution.
The exquisite construction of the "bacillary layer" of the retina and the beauty of color and marking found in plants and animals are adduced as evidences of design, and the laws of chemical combination as testifying to some scheme of creation including the
