CURRENT LITERATURE.
Sketches of C•eation. By Alexander Winchell, LL.D. (Sampson, Low and Co.)—Dr. Winchell's book is meant to give readers who have not the inclination or ability to study science "a panoramic survey of its grand generalizations," and to furnish those who do study it with a general view of the ground over which they have been passing. A third object is to point out how nature is a revelation of God. "Science.
interpreted," he says, "is theology." These objects he carries out in a series of lectures which are certainly interesting and spirited, though
they are written in a style which is sometimes, to our taste, too collo- quial, and sometimes too magniloquent. Dr. Winchell occupies a pro- fessor's chair in the University of Michigan, and it is one of the valuable- characteristics of his book that its illustrations are mostly drawn from- fields of research which, though exceedingly rich, are for the most part unknown to students on this side of the Atlantic. Our language, how- ever, is apparently receiving in Michigan some surprising developments.
In a chapter devoted to considering whether there will be an animal superior to man, Dr. Winchell proclaims his conviction that we are
safe in possession of the dignity which we now possess as archonts of
existence. A lexicon, however, will help us to discover what an "archont " is ; we are more in the dark when we read the following:— " Man is the consummation of a dualism. While the beautiful implies man, it excludes his successor." But it would bo unfair to leave our readers with the impression that these eccentricities are anything more than blemishes in an able and interesting book.
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