"Finally, if the development of the various colors of flowers be independent of the local action of light, the latter is no less indirectly the indispensable agent both of the formation and of the colors of flowers, since the corolla and the staminæ can only grow and subsist at the expense of substances formed in the leaves by the action of light.

"THE RAYS OF THE SUN THE FIRST CONDITION OF EXISTENCE FOR ORGANIZED BEINGS.

"The rays of the sun are, therefore, from every point of view, the first condition of existence for organized beings on the surface of the Earth. They supply them with heat, without which life would soon be extinguished; with light, which presides over the nutrition of plants, and consequently over the lives of every being in the animal world; at every moment they determine numerous chemical combinations and decompositions. They constitute an incessant and periodically renewed source of movement, power, and life. Men of the present day profit not only by the prodigious quanity of force which the Sun annually pours upon the Earth in the form of calorific, chemical, and luminous undulations, but they are consuming also that which has been preserved for thousands of centuries. What are, in fact, the accumulated masses of coal buried in the crust of the Earth by geological action, but the produce of solar light condensed some thousand centuries ago in gigantic forests? Their carboniferous principle transformed by a kind of slow distillation amassed itself first into a peaty tissue, then into more and more compact strata, until the layers of vegetable remains were completely converted into basins of coal. At the present day in our manufactories, our locomotives, and steamers, these precious fossils give back to man in light, heat, and mechanical power, all that they had formerly acquired for thousands of years from the rays of the Sun."

Since the foregoing was written we have received from Scribner & Co. two additional volumes of the series of "Illustrated Wonders," viz. :—

The Wonders of the Human Body. From the French of A. L. Pileur, Doctor of Medicine. Illustrated with forty-five engravings.

The Wonders of Italian Art. By Louis Viardot.

gravings.

Twenty-eight en

The former rich in anatomical and physiological instruction popularized; the latter opening to the great reading public the wealth and magnificence of art in the land of artists. We take from it the following extract:

46 MICHAEL ANGELO'S REVENGE ON BIAGIO.

"The fresco of Michael Angelo was not yet finished when it was nearly being destroyed. From the denunciation of his chamberlain, Biagio of Cesena, who considered the painting more suitable for a bath-room or even a tavern than for the pope's chapel, Paul III. had, for a short time, the wish to have it destroyed. To revenge himself on his denunciator, Michael Angelo condemned Biagio to the pillory of immortality. He painted him among the condemned under the form of Minos, and according to the fiction of Dante in the fifth canto of the 'Inferno:'

Stravvi Minos orribilmente e ringia,

that is to say, with the ass's ears of Midas and a serpent for a girdle, which recalls the lines of an old Spanish romance, on the King Rodrigo, crying out from his tomb:

Ya me comen, ya me comen,

Por do mas pecado habia.

Biagio complained to the pope, demanding that at least his features should be effaced. 'In what part of his picture has he placed you?' asked the pope

'In hell.'-'If it had been in purgatory, we could have got you out, but in hell, nulla est redemptio.'"

Annual of Scientific Discovery, or Year Book of Facts in Science and Art, for 1870. Exhibiting the most important Discoveries and Improvements in Mechanics, Useful Arts, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Botany, Mineralogy, Meteorology, Geography, Antiquities, etc. Together with Notes on the Progress of Science during the year 1869; a List of recent Scientific Publications, Obituaries of Eminent, Scientific Men, etc. Edited by John Trowbridge, S. B., Assistant Professor of Physics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; aided by Samuel Kneeland, M. D., Professor of Zoology and Physiology in the Institute; and W. R. Nichols, Graduate of the Institute. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 59 Washington Street. New York: Sheldon & Co. London: Trub

ner & Co. 1870.

This title-page does such justice to the contents of this great Annual, which we always welcome, that we cannot improve upon without stretching our remarks beyond a short notice to an extended article. It is quite indispensable to all who would keep at all abreast of the immense strides of pure and applied science. A prodigious amount of most valuable and interesting matter is closely packed into it. Few could read it without finding practical suggestions from which they could gain economical advantages greatly surpassing its cost. The schemes of the foundation of separate species by natural selection and by derivation, as against an origin by creation, are not dealt with quite according to their deserts. The Word! or, Universal Redemption and Salvation; pre-ordained before all Worlds. A more Evangelical, Philanthropic, and Christian Interpretation of the Almighty God's Sacred Promises of Infinite Mercy, Forgiveness, and Grace; reverently_submitted to Christendom. By George Marin De La Voye, a Septuagenarian Optimist. London: Whittaker & Co.; Trubner & Co. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co.

If the title-page does not sufficiently display the nebulous (is it too much to say, delirious?) magniloquence of this amiable and venerable rhapsodist, almost any page of the book will. We give our readers, instar omnium, the following from

the first pages (48-9) at which we happened to open:

FIRST AND FOREMOST SALUTARY PRESENCE OF EVIL.

"It was the eternal monotheocratic Lord of all things, visible and invisible, who, having mentally' created Adam, upon first discovering that a self-generated incipient ether, of an extremely virulent nature, was imperceptibly but effectively contaminating the souls of his heavenly spirits and powers, besides spreading influential pestilence throughout his principalities and kingdoms, had furthermore anticipatedly composed those prophecies, revelations, and sacred warnings (including our Lord's prayer), which were in due time to constitute the most important portion of our Sacred Bible.

"Although not yet self-multiplied, our Almighty God, the ever-flowing 'Foun tain of Divine Love and Grace,' combined within his all-sufficient and formida ble Oneness, I am Alpha and Omega.-The First and the Last' all the wonderful attributes of the Three incomprehensible Gods of that godhead, which he secretly imposed, after a time, by miraculous divisions, and separations, mercifully to treble.

"Therefore, annihilating forever, by a single thought, the total existence of the

above-mentioned ethereal malefic principles of evil, Jehovah next evoked from the infernal abysses, where he had for myriads of centuries past confined him at the extremest verge of the immeasurable universe, that false Archangel he intentionally formed and endowed as a 'spiritual antidote,' perfectly subservient to his Almighty will, against the deplorable ills which he from the very beginning had foreseen and forefended."

A History of the Free Churches of England, from A. D. 1688-A. D. 1851. By Herbert S. Skeats. Second edition. London: Arthur Miall. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. 1869.

A field is here explored in regard to which there is a wide desire and need of information on historical, ecclesiastical, theological, political, and sociological grounds. The above volume is really a history of dissent from the established church in England. He traces its various forms in their origin, progress, developments, and their joint and several influence upon the religion, politics, the social, moral, educational condition of England. He shows how much that country owes to its Dissenters, for all that is most precious in the present state, privileges, and franchises of the people.

In the present agitations, which are shaking Great Britain on Establishment, Disestablishment, and Voluntaryism, this large and solid volume is a valuable thesaurus of historical information. The subject of Free Churches and the proper support of them and their ministers, has an unfailing interest in this country. Sustentation-funds yet constitute the unsolved problem of our American Voluntaryism. The English churches sketched in this volume are also of interest to American Christians, as most of our great American churches are their off-. spring, which have largely outgrown the mother churches whence they sprung. We have noticed in this volume an incidental confirmation of what we have always believed, in regard to the relation, position, and agency of Wesley and Whitefield in that great religious awakening in the English Church, out of which the Methodist Church grew. It was at a later stage in organizing and shaping it, that the hand of John Wesley was most felt. Says Mr Skeats (p. 354):

"Much, however, as John Wesley's name has been identified, and justly so, with the great religious awakening which followed from his preaching and from that of his followers, it is to Whitefield that the origin of the movement is more especially due. It was not Wesley, but Whitefield, who first awoke the people from the sleep of spiritual death; and it was not Wesley, but Whitefield, who first broke the bonds of ecclesiastical conventionalisms and laws. This occurred while the Wesleys were in Georgia."

We have received from Scribner & Co., the publishers, Vols. IX. and X. of their cheap edition of Froude's History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth; being the 3d and 4th volumes upon the Reign of Elizabeth. This work has been so fully and frequently characterized, and its great merits specified by us in connection with the issue of previous volumes, that we deem it necessary to do no more than welcome an edition whose cheapness will render it as accessible as welcome to a greatly enlarged circle of readers. The Laws of Discursive Thought: being a Text-Book of Formal_Logic. By James McCosh, LL. D., President of the College of New Jersey, Princeton; formerly Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Queen's College, Belfast. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1870.

Those who are interested in the science of Logic, and in Dr. McCosh as a metaphysical writer, will take great pleasure in studying this volume. Although the great principles of Logic are a priori truths, apodictic in their nature, and as unquestionable and unchangeable as the multiplication-table, it is wonderful what a succession of able treatises is constantly appearing on the subject, each presenting it, as a whole, or in some of its sides and angles, in new aspects, which serve to promote or perfect our apprehension and mastery of it. The readers of our late book-notices must have observed the frequent recent instances of this. Dr. McCosh has in this compact volume treated this subject with his wonted clearness, freshness, and thoroughness, and with more than his usual conciseness.

He has especially laid himself out upon that first element of logic, the Notion, or, as it is sometimes called, simple apprehension, in its threefold form of Percept, Abstract, and Concept, and unfolded the whole subject with much originality, force, and justness. None can peruse this chapter without widening their insight into the subject, whether they always agree in all points with the author or not. For ourselves, we see little in it to dissent from, and much to instruct

us.

The chapter on Language, with which the author closes his discussion of the Notion, though carried to an extent that is somewhat extra-logical, grammatical, or rhetorical, is, nevertheless, a legitimate outgrowth of his analysis of the Notion. We are glad that Dr. McCosh did not allow himself to be prevented, by any respect for the mere technical bounds of the science, from inserting this admirable chapter.

The volume before us runs rapidly but thoroughly through judgments and syllogisms, and concludes with copious examples for the proper exercise of learners.

It will take rank with those productions of the author which have already established his great reputation as a writer on the Mental Sciences.

Notes on the 'Apocalypse; with an Appendix containing dissertations on some of the apocalyptic symbols, together with animadversions on the interpretations of several among the most learned and approved expositors of Britain and America. By David Steele, Sr., Pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Congregation. 16mo, pp. 323. Philadelphia: Young & Ferguson. 1870.

These notes follow with minor and unessential variations in the track of those English expositors who find in the Revelation a consecutive disclosure of the future, and who adapt its mystic symbols in regular chronological order to the events of ecclesiastical and civil history. The numerical periods are computed on the assumption that a day stands for a year, with the exception of the millen. nium, which is with equal positiveness and equal absence of proof declared to be one thousand ordinary years. The trumpets succeed the seals, and the vials follow the trumpets, or else "cotemporate" (p. 240) with the last of the series. The seals extend from the time of the Apostle John to the accession of Constantine. The trumpets betoken the utter destruction of the Roman Empire. The first four herald the fall of its western portion. The fifth and sixth bring the Saracens and Turks to overwhelm its eastern division. The seventh shall put a final end to all "immoral power," under which broad designation are included all existing

European states and American governments. The light in which the writer regards our own national organization will appear from the following (p. 171): "Speculative atheism caused the French revolution and led to the erection of the United States government; which, having openly declared independence of England, soon after virtually declared independence of God." His feeling towards "secret and sworn confederacies " appears from p. 172, where, freemasonry, oddfellowship, temperance associations, and a countless number of affiliated societies are indiscriminately spoken of as "the offshoots of popery and infidelity," and as means or agencies by which "the dragon still assails the woman." Whether his censures of "corruptions in the matter of God's worship" p. 177, and "human inventions as means of grace," p. 205, are aimed at or designed to cover the sin of singing any thing but Rouse's version of the Psalms, we cannot say positively; but sundry expressions scattered through the volume lead us to suspect it. On the whole, if "freedom from any political bias " (p. 6), and we may venture to add ecclesiastical bias, is an important "prerequisite" to the right understanding of the Apocalypse, we fear that the Rev. Mr. Steele will fall under the same condemnation which he has passed upon all his predecessors.

Removing Mountains: Life Lessons from the Gospels. By John S. Hart. 16mo, pp. 306. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1870.

This is a series of meditations upon Gospel topics written in that graceful and felicitous style, of which Prof. Hart is an acknowledged master. They are of various character, but all are full of instructive thought, or happy illustration, or suggestive application to subjects of immediate interest. The volume takes its name from the first of these brief articles, in which the attempt is made to rise to a conception of the power of faith to overcome the most formidable obstacles, as this is set forth in our Lord's familiar words: which from their very familiarity are apt to make only a vague and indefinite impression. The emblem is so vast that it requires time and reflection to apprehend it properly. Prof. Hart will not suffer it to be dismissed in a single sentence but holds it up before the minds of his readers, and assists them by successive steps to reach an estimate of what it is to remove a mountain; what it would be for a corps of engineers with all the aid of modern machinery and appliances to dig down the Alleghanies or the Rocky Mountains, and wheel them into the ocean; and what that must be that can execute a task, to which such an operation can be fitly compared.

Prof. Hart's position and experience as an educator will naturally attract attention to his views upon the relation of Christianity to our public-school system, as shown in Chapter IX.: "The Things that belong to Cæsar." And SabbathSchool teachers and others interested in promoting the efficiency of this important agency will find timely and useful suggestions in Chapter XLIV.: "Nothing but Leaves."

History of the Presbytery of Erie. By S. J. M. Eaton, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Franklin, Pa. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

A valuable contribution to Presbyterian Church History, undertaken by appointment of the Presbytery. It contains a graphic account of the early churches in Western Pennsylvania; this being the third Presbytery organized