By N. B. Wolfe, M.D. Chicago: Religio-philosophical Publishing House. Pp. 570.
Missouri University Report, 1875. Pp. 210.
Report on the Mineralogy of Pennsylvania. By F. A. Genth. Pp. 206.
The Physiological Reasons why. By A. Hutchins, M.D. Brooklyn: W. W. Swayne. Pp. 50.
The Genera Geomys and Thomomys. By Dr. E. Coues. Pp. 73.
Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Science. Vol. II., No. 4.
Mineral Deposits in Essex County, Mass. By C. J. Brockway. Boston: A. Williams & Co. Pp. 60. Price, 50 cents.
Fishes of Indiana. By D. S. Jordan, M.D. Pp. 42.
Reasons for embracing the Doctrines of Swedenborg. By Rev. G. Bush. New York: E. H. Swinney. Pp. 120.
Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers. May, 1875. Pp. 140.
Bureau of Education. Nos. 3 and 4, 1875. Pp. 108.
Melanosiderite. By J. P. Cooke, Jr. Pp. 11.
The Sun and the Earth, by Balfour Stewart; Force, by J. W. Phelps. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. Pp. 31. Price, 25 cents.
Insects of the Field. By E. S. Packard, Jr. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. Pp. 31. Price, 25 cents.
TO HERBERT SPENCER.
BY GRANT ALLEN.
Deepest and mightiest of our later seers,
Spencer, whose piercing glance descried afar
Down fathomless abysses of dead years
The formless waste drift into sea or star,
And through vast wilds of elemental strife
Tracked out the first faint steps of yet unconscious life;
Thy hand has led us through the pathless maze,
Chaotic sights and sounds that throng our brain,
Traced every strand along its tangled ways;
And woven anew the many-colored skein;
Bound fact to fact in unrelenting laws,
And woven through minds and worlds the unity of cause.
Ere thou hadst read the universal plan.
Our life was unto us a thing alone:
On this side Nature stood, on that side man,
Irreconcilable, as twain, not one:
Thy voice first told us man was Nature's child,
And in one common law proclaimed them reconciled.
No partial system could suffice for thee,
Whose eye has scanned the boundless realms of space;
Gazed, through the aeons, on the fiery sea,
And caught faint glimpses of that awful face,
Which, clad with earth, and heaven, and souls of men.
Veils its mysterious shape forever from our ken!
As tiny builders in some coral shoal.
Raising the future mountain to the sky.
Build each his cell, unconscious of the whole,
Live each his little life, and work and die;
Even so the lesser toilers in thy field
Build each the little pile his narrower range can yield.
But, like a skillful architect, thy mind
Works up the rock those Insect reasons frame.
With conscious plan and purpose clear defined
In arch and column, toward a single aim.
Till, joining part to part, thy wider soul
Piles up a stately fane, a grand, consistent whole.
Not without honor is the prophet's name,
Save with his country and his kin in time;
But after-years shall noise abroad thy fame
Above all other fame in prose or rhyme;
For praise is his who builds for his own age,
But he who builds for time must look to time for wage.
Yet, though thy purer spirit do not need
The vulgar guerdon of a brief renown.
Some little need, at least, some little need
Our age may add to thy more lasting crown;
Accept an unknown singer's thanks for light
Cast on the dim abyss that bounds our little sight.
Sleep and Digestion.—Speaking from his own experience, which would appear to differ from the experience of other people, Frank Buckland asserts that the best time to go to bed is immediately, or very soon, after the principal meal of the day. "All animals," he remarks, "always go to sleep, if they are not disturbed, after eating. This is especially noticeable in dogs; and the great John Hunter showed by an experiment that digestion goes on during sleep more than when an animal is awake and going about." Mr. Buckland finds a con-
- ↑ Professor of Mental Philosophy in Queen's College, Jamaica.
