The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-17 00:00:00

Geology for the Million. By Margaret Plues.
Edited by Edward Wood. One vol., pp. 156.
. Routledge, Warne, and Routledge.
A popular guide to the marvels of Geology is the
latest edition to the Messrs. Routledge's compre-
hensive series of railway books—the series familiar
to the public as one littering the book-stall of every
railway station in the United Kingdom with certain
brightly coloured volumes, well known as .Routledge'
Cheap literature. Whether Margaret Plues has
ever nerself handled the hammer of the geologist,
we know not; but, one way or another, either
through books or through personal investigation,
she has made herself sufficiently well acquainted
with the wonders stored up in this world under
our feet, to be enabled very agreeably and very
lucidly to impart much of her own scienti-
fic knowledge to the un-scientific reader. A 8
the first step (across the threshold, as it were),
into this Grand Temple of a Science built up out
of the giant crags of a world before the Flood ! Of
a world:further back even than that—a pre-Adamite
world, the ages of the extinct monsters—of those
stupendous nightmares in flesh and blood, our'
passing in mere horror of aspect the gry-
phons of heraldry eni the dragons of
the Fairy tales ! TEE PTERODACTYLE-- a
flying reptile of most repulsive appearance--a
reptile that could swim and walk as readily as it
could fly—loathsome as a bat, larger than a cormo-
rant—with sixty teeth, huge saucer eyes, enor
mously elongated snout, and wings ribbed like vtist
expanded umbrellas ! THE IGUANODON, a gigantic
reptile like a crocodile, from thirty to forty feet in
length and twenty feet in thickness--a formidable
head a yard in length from snout to neck—a tail
five yards in length—legs of appalliog circum-
ference—enormous feet, each armed with a claw.
five inches long! THE PLESIOSAURUS, with a huge
birdlike head, having a spoonshaped beak armed
with about a hundred thin pointed teeth—an ,asto-
nishingly lung flexible neck, a neck longer in pro-
portion to its body than that of a swan—a rep tile
carcase like that of a lizard or crocodile—and, into ead
of legs, four wide flapping paddles like fins ! TOB
ICHTHYOSAURUS, vaster, more terrible, more hide"
ous—with a short neck, a most, it might be said,
no neck at all, but a snout of fearful size, bristling
along the inner edge of each enormous jaw with tusks
of terrible length and strengtit—its four paddle-
like fins, proportionately gigantic, capable not only
of flapping the waters of the deep with wonderful
rapidity, for its swift propulsion, but capable also
of carrying the creature with astonis.hing rapidity
on dry land. The APTERYX, the enot mous wing-
less bird of New Zealand—The MEGATHERIUM----
The MASTODON—The TELEOSAURUS— iho MEGA"
LOSAURUS—The HYL,EOSAURUS Here they all
stalk, in succession, before the youthful at Went in
the Science of Geology—here they appear visibly to
the effigies of them given in the illustrations of this
little handbook--hate they are described with
admirable succinctness and accuracy- in the Letter-
press penned by Margaret Pines, and edited by Ed-
ward Wood. As a volume excellently well calcu-
lated to popularise a very noble and enthraliing
study, Routledge's Geology for the Million deserves
the welcome it is secure of winning.

The Harp of the Welsh Mountaineer, By Fawcett
DAWSOLI. BVO. pp. 43. Simpkin, MarahaLt and

Co.
The enthusiastic Cambrian who has written this
amazing lay, entitled " A Fairy Legend of Early
British Fairies," needs from the London critic not
one syllable of encouragement. Unknown his name
may be, undoubtedly is, in the literary circles of
the metropolis. No matter—he annouinces, with
manifest exultation, the fact of his identity. The
domino and mask he has worn hitherto, while
writing anonymously, we know no more about than
we do about himself, the wearer of it. Yet mask
and domino he now strips off with a flouris b, for
the purpose of revealing his own actual
indivi-
duality. He tolls us on his title page that he
we hold our breath in suspense, awaiting the reve-
lation—" The son of Ebor," of the York Courant.
Even then, however, we are by no means startled,
for of the " Son of Ebor'' we never heard mention
previously to this very announcement of Mr.
Dawson'6. As to the amour propre of the author
being in any way offended by any such ackno.
ledgment of ignorance on our part as this,
we doubt
it. And for the simple reason, that so intense is our
author's self-confidence in his own powers, so
tense is his belief in his own importance, that in the
shape of au introduction or address-to his " Gentle
Reader" he can speak thus frankly :—.` Per-
haps, reader, when you take up this Book,
you will exclaim, Oh, poetry !' and cast it
aside. Be not so rash ; poetry is the language of the
Deity, He speaks it in every leaf and flower,in every'
sunbeam, and in every cloud. All poets are prophets,
true or false, according to the bias of their genius.
When a nation ceases to produce poets, or becomes
so lost in frivolity es to disregard their aspiratioes,
that nation has no longer healthful vitality. Alt
the representative empires have produced great
poets in their primary and culminating periods."
ThiorNlT kuppeolis the, culminating period, and hence

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