reasoning from an assumption below the ken of the microscope to a conclusion above that of the telescope?
Mr. Ewbank, however, does not often indulge in a logical stride so long or on such shaky footing as this. Through more or less cloudiness of expression, he gives us many striking and satisfactory views, looking towards a complete synthesis of the glorious system of things to which we belong, makes out the universe as habitable and cheerful as it is wide, and leaves us admiring its good more than marvelling at its evil. He maintains that all solar and planetary bodies have a central, vital heat, produced and maintained by the same cause,—to wit, the gravitating or condensing force; its intensity being as the mass. In the sun, the mass is so great, that, in spite of its inferior density, more and intenser heat is generated by condensation than in any or all of the planets. If the whole orb is not incandescent, there is such intense heat in its central portion as to generate gases, which, being thrown up through its atmosphere, to a height at least as great as the whole diameter of our globe, condense there again with an ineffably brilliant combustion. The solid crust of the sun, he thinks, may be comparatively cool,—as cool, perhaps, as our tropical climates,—by the favor of cloud-curtains, which operate as screens, and reflect off into space the heat of the combustion overhead. He might have given more reasons than he has for this conclusion. Whether our terrestrial aurora-borealis is caused by the combustion of gases that have been generated by internal heat or not, we know that the combustion of gas in the upper regions of our atmosphere would not warm the surface of the earth much more than it would that of the moon. It is easy enough to make out, from facts which our terrene science has revealed to us, how the sun may be a perpetual fountain of light, heat, and force to its most distant planets, without having itself any superabundance of either of these emanations for its own domestic consumption. The solar population may have no more sunshine than we do, and may have even that mitigated with the luxury of ice-creams, if not with that of arctic explorations and polar bears. Whether they have as good opportunities as we for astronomical observations is a little doubtful; but their thermological studies must flourish abundantly, to say nothing of their advantages in pyrotechnics.
A Text-Book of Vegetable and Animal Physiology, designed for the Use of Schools, Seminaries, and Colleges in the United States. By Henry Goadby, M.D., Professor of Vegetable and Animal Physiology and Entomology in the State Agricultural College of Michigan, Fellow of the Linnæan Society of London, etc., etc. Embellished with upwards of four hundred and fifty Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 346 and 348, Broadway. 1858.
The name of Mr. Goadby is embalmed in a preservative solution invented by him and known as Goadby's Fluid. Those who have visited the Royal College of Surgeons in London tell us of very exquisite anatomical preparations made by him while employed as Minute Dissector to that institution. We are grateful to Mr. Goadby for consecrating his narrow but sure immortality and his excellent mechanical talent to the service of the New World and especially of the State of Michigan.
It does not follow from this that Mr. Goadby has written a good book on Animal and Vegetable Physiology, nor that he could write such a book. Starting with this proposition, we are candid rather than sanguine as we open the volume. We find that it is not in any true sense a treatise upon Physiology, but chiefly upon the Minute Anatomy of Animals and Vegetables, with some incidental physiological commentaries.
On closer examination, we find it to be the work of a microscopist, and not that of a physiologist or a scholar. Its merits are principally its illustrations, many of which are from original dissections, some of which are very good diagrams, others ordinary, and some—such as the view of the human brain and spinal chord on page 282—wretched. The colored figures are washed with dull tints in a very shabby and negligent way. The text is mainly an account of the objects illustrated in the figures, and will prove interesting to the working microscopist as explaining the observations of a skilful dissector. As
