Brit._, Art.

LAMARCK.) How a modern physicist regards Lamarck's views on physics may be seen by the following statement kindly written for this book by Professor Carl Barus of Brown University, Providence: "Lamarck's physical and chemical speculations, made throughout on the basis of the alchemistic philosophy of the time, will have little further interest to-day than as evidence showing the broadly philosophic tendencies of Lamarck's mind.

Made without experiment and without mathematics, the contents of the three volumes will hardly repay perusal, except by the historian interested in certain aspects of pre-Lavoisierian science.

The temerity with which physical phenomena are referred to occult static molecules, permeated by subtle fluids, the whole mechanism left without dynamic quality, since the mass of the molecule is to be non-essential, is markedly in contrast with the discredit into which such hypotheses have now fallen.

It is true that an explanation of natural phenomena in terms "le feu ethere, le feu calorique, et le feu fixe" might be interpreted with reference to the modern doctrine of energy; but it is certain that Lamarck, antedating Fresnel, Carnot, Ampere, not to mention their great followers, had not the faintest inkling of the possibility of such an interpretation.