IN "Kamongo" Mr. Smith takes us on a scientific adventure into the great universe and from there into the world of the unknown. It is semi-fictional in form. Two men on a ship in the sweltering heat of the tropics get into conversation. One is a young scientist returning to Africa to continue his exploration, the other an Anglican missionary going back to his jungle parish. As often happens they talk about their careers; and the scientist, a bit embarrassed at talking so much, tells of his search for Kamongo, the lung fish, who, when the dry season domes along, buries himself in the harioning mud and lives by merely breathing through an air hole, and who dis when you put him in water for any length of time.

The scientist enlarges from the slow of this strange freak of Evolution to the consideration of Evolution as a whole and of life itself. And prodded by the other's worried questioning, he tells his theory of the cause of Evolution, that it was purely a series of accidents things and developments that just happened. But the priest doesn't find this solution satisfactory, it does not tie up with his belief in a personal God and a great purpose behind life. Finally the scientist is led on to define his won theory of vital forces, which he conceives as whirlpools of energy. Our bodies, our bones and skin, are but the debris thrown out by this eddy, and we are but an accident of energy.

In the end much is still left to the reader's own reasoning powers, but he does have a new conception of vital power. For the first time the new scientific attitude toward God and religion is defined. Whether we agree with it or not, it stimulates us to think out for ourselves our own theories and ideas.

It is a delightfully written book published in a truly admirable format. Within its few pages, it combines the romance of the strange but true, the stimulation of logical and convincing thought, and the adventure of exploring the unknown.