The Earth's Beginning. By Sir Robert Stamen Ball, F.R.S. (Cassell
and Co. 7s. 6d.)—This is an exposition of the Nebular Hypothesis, originally given ía the form of le :tures to a juvenile audience at the Royal Institution. (This same juvenile audience must have been remarkably acute, for, though Sir R. S. Ball is great at exposition, the argument is naturally hard to follow.) That the spiral nebulae now known to exist in the Universe—we owe our knowledge of them to photography—are worlds in making is a truth which was conjectured more than a century and a half ago. Kant first conceived the notion; Laplace reduced it to a logical theory ; and Herschel verified it by observation. It is impossible for us to reproduce the arguments• which Sir R. S. Ball marshals in support of the theory. Let it suffice to say that the work is admirably done, and that it is greatly helped by the illustrations, which are bAh numerous and enlightening. Perhaps the most interesting is the account of the great eruption of Krakatoa, the most formidable ebullition of long-stored nebular energy that has ever taken place,—at least on the earth.
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