Abstract
THIS is an odd book. Even in these days of sensational works on science we are not sure that, in his own style, M. Rames has been surpassed. His purpose is to describe in a kind of prose epic, the history of our planet and its inhabitants, from the nebulous condition of the solar system down to the present day. Apostrophising sun, moon and stars by turns, he tells them how they have been fashioned and of what uses they are. Tyrants and philosophers come in for appropriate addresses and then the writer plunges into the depths of the primeval ocean in which the Laurentian rocks were formed. He finds its waters hot, charged with silica and in the act of depositing crystalline rocks in the form of gneiss and schist. One day—whether in the depths of the thermal ocean, or in the lakes that dotted the lonely islets, he cannot tell—“Life, one of the special forms of solar heat pervading the universe like all the other natural forces, finds, for the first time upon our globe in little aggregations of inert matter, the conditions which allow of its manifestation, and thus rises dimly the dawn of an organic kingdom.” The subsequent development of these primal germs into the complex genera and species of the animal and vegetable world, through its succeeding geological formations, forms the subject of the remaining portions of the book, of which, however, only the first part, reaching into, the Permian period, is published. M. Rames seeks no adventitious aid from sensational pictures: not a single illustration occurs in his book. He trusts wholly to the powers of his pen and has certainly produced a lively, if not very trustworthy, narrative.
History of Creation.—La Création d'aprés la Géologie et la Philosophie Naturelle.
Par J. B. Rames. (Paris: Hachette.)
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G., A. History of Creation.—La Création d'aprés la Géologie et la Philosophie Naturelle . Nature 1, 381 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/001381a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001381a0