752 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mr. Becker in his interesting little book 

 gives us a glance into several of these great 

 societies, or rather he takes us into his 

 club, and, making himself and his reader 

 very comfortable, he proceeds to chat with 

 agreeable frankness about what he has 

 seen, about what interests him, whether it 

 be the theory of isomeric alcohols, or the 

 way the pretty girls of the London audi- 

 ences are dressed. Once in a while he 

 seems to feel that be is growing trivial, and 

 drawing forth a memorandum he gives a 

 long (and useful) array of facts and figures. 

 But these occasions are rare ; he tells his 

 listener very pleasantly what he has seen in 

 the various scientific companies, what he 

 thought, and what he knows about them, 

 what amused him and what bored him. 

 Almost every one will enjoy his easy talk, 

 and almost every one will learn something 

 from his book. His view of science and 

 scientific men is not precisely the highest 

 nor the most dramatic one. Huxley is one 

 of those who have helped "to gild the pill 

 of science," not a strong man earnestly 

 striving for what he thinks the right and 

 true. Tyndall is quite the same the en- 

 thusiasm, the " sacred rage " in them is 

 quite left out ; they are simply men in 

 dress-coats who are successful, eminent, 

 and highly to be respected. 



The English astronomer Smyth tells us 

 in one of his fascinating books of a visit 

 which he made to Encke at the Berlin Ob- 

 servatory, and he seizes so well the dra- 

 matic side of the situation that his reader 

 almost hears, as he. did, the astronomical 

 clock ticking off the seconds which but 

 just now belonged to eternity and are 

 lapsed into time. 



To Mr. Becker, Encke would have been 

 an eminent observer and astronomer, and 

 the secretary of the Berlin Academy; and 

 his clock would have been in a mahogany 

 case, and would have cost 100 0s. Od. ; 

 but Mr. Becker's account of the Berlin Ob- 

 servatory would have been worth listening 

 to. Indeed, it is hardly fair to object even 

 in the least to the manner of the book, 

 since its pretensions are so modest and its 

 facts and figures so good ; and we are sure 

 that all of Mr. Becker's readers will thank 

 him for the quiet enjoyment he gives them 

 in his 340 pages of pleasant talk. 



A Practical Treatise on the Gases met 

 with in Coal-Mines. By the late J. J. 

 Atkinson, Government Inspector of 

 Mines of the County of Durham, Eng- 

 land. 53 pp. Price 50 cents. New 

 York : D. Van Nostrand. 



The author of this little monograph was 

 an authority upon the most complicated 

 questions of ventilation, and the President 

 of the Manchester Geological Society de- 

 clares it to be "the most useful book of 

 reference yet published on the ventilation 

 of mines." 



The discussion is unquestionably of very 

 great interest to all who have the manage- 

 ment of mines, or are exposed to danger 

 from ignorance of the nature of the gases 

 that are set free in subterranean explora- 

 tions. But the little book seems not with- 

 out interest to others. The laws of atmos- 

 pheric change, and their relations to life, 

 are general, and the practical problem of 

 ventilation, as we encounter it every day in 

 our dwellings, is by no means simple. There 

 is much information in this little manual 

 relating to the air we breathe, its pressures, 

 movements, vitiations, and various proper- 

 ties, which is of general interest and im- 

 portance. 



Observations of Sen-Spots at Anclam. 

 By Prof. G. Spoerer. "With 23 Litho- 

 graphic Plates. Publications of the 

 (German) Astronomical Society, No. 13. 

 Leipsic, 1874. 



We have had occasion to call the atten- 

 tion of our readers, from time to time, to 

 various popular works on the physical con- 

 dition of the sun (" The Sun," by Proctor, 

 Lockyer's "Solar Physics," etc.), and we 

 now desire to note the appearance of this 

 great work of Dr. Spoerer's, which, with 

 Carrington's " Observations of the Spots on 

 the Sun," forms the basis upon which future 

 theorists must build. 



Carrington's accurate observations com- 

 menced in November, 1S53, and since that 

 time the solar surface has been assiduously 

 observed by Carrington, Spoerer, Wolf, 

 Secchi, De la Rue, and others, in Europe, 

 and by C. n. F. Peters, Winlock, and Lang- 

 ley, in America. Photographic records of 

 the sun-spots have been made in America, 

 in England, and in Russia ; and Germany 

 has just established an observatory at Pots- 





