Natural Phenomena, the Genetic Record, and the Sciences. By Alexander
M'Donald.—(Longmans).—This is really a portentous little book. Mr. DI'Donald, its author, appears to believe in the accuracy of the Mosaic account of the Creation, and his object is, we think, to show how that account may be harmonized with the discoveries of science. So far, we believe, we can Bee our way ; but beyond that all is darkness. We have really read a good deal of Mr. M'Donald's volume, but we have mot the slightest notion respecting the mode in which he proposes to solve his self-imposed problem. The reader will, we trust, allow that there is some excuse for our want of comprehension, when he learns that the following sentence, which appears to convey a peculiarly im- portant view, is literally rather more intelligible than the greater part of Mr. M'Donald's work :—" A formal idea of the heaven and the earth may be obtained by imagining the heaven as at first an effiuviant generation from a monocentral point, occupying, or creating and occupying, space ; the earth, as the arrest or end of such generative action, with the gradual relaxation of central tension and abnegation of such centre, the consequence being the formation of a huge internal spherical vacuity, termed in the Genetic record earth.' " We are tempted to give one more specimen, illustrative of Mr. M'Donald's manner when he gets further into his subject. "Weight," he profoundly observes, "is as the balanced conic angle ; fusibility as the linear sphere radiance ; 'colour the variation from crystalline lucidity ; and magnetism the amount of spiral inclination ; while metallic lustre elevates the horizontal line of the atom into the frigid zone of its power." Surely critics ought to be protected from writers like Mr. M'Donald.
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