LITERARY NOTICES. 



243 



that he had chosen a branch of physics so 

 well settled as that of light, and thought 

 that he ought rather to have entered into 

 some of the exciting phases of modern sci- 

 entific controversy. Others complained that 

 he dealt with the subject in so elementary 

 a manner, and thought he ought to go into 

 it with a profundity commensurate with his 

 reputation, and such as would afford an 

 adequate excuse for his leaving home and 

 going so far away to instruct a foreign peo- 

 ple. For we may just as well acknowledge 

 that there was a great deal of narrowness 

 and illiberality in the view taken of Tyn- 

 dall's errand, and which was by no means 

 confined to the laity. There was an ill- 

 suppressed jealousy on the part of some of 

 our scientific men, which made them cap- 

 tious in regard to the lectures, and which 

 gave freight and currency to objections that 

 from other sources would have been regard- 

 ed as frivolous and unworthy of notice. It 

 would have been far easier for Prof. Tyndall 

 to have taken up some of the recent contro- 

 versial topics, in which the public takes so 

 deep an interest, and read a series of dis- 

 courses that would have drawn crowds to 

 his lecture-room, instead of encumbering 

 himself with tons of apparatus, and bring- 

 ing along experienced assistants to make 

 his lectures thoroughly experimental and 

 demonstrative for large popular audiences. 

 But his choice of a subject, and his method 

 of treating it, have been abundantly vindi- 

 cated. He presented the leading principles 

 of optics in a striking and impressive man- 

 ner, and as connected and interpreted by 

 the undulatory theory of light, with various 

 lessons and applications in regard to the 

 uses of scientific theory, and the motives of 

 scientific research, which the topic was so 

 well suited to enforce. Tyndall's American 

 lectures form incomparably the best popu- 

 lar exposition of the wave-theory of light to 

 be found in any language, and for this pur- 

 pose it will long hold its place as a standard 

 book. Accepting the public approval of the 

 work for this purpose, as evinced by the 

 several editions that have been called for. 

 Prof. Tyndall has carefully revised it, made 

 some important additions, and substituted 

 new and superior illustrations, so that the 

 edition which now appears, although faith- 

 fully presenting the lectures as they were 



delivered, has very much the aspect of a 

 new work. He has prefixed to the volume 

 a fine steel engraving, by Mr. Adlard, of Dr. 

 Thomas Young, whose position in modern 

 physics he holds to be only second to that 

 of Newton, and in a full appendix of instruc- 

 tive notes and extracts he has incorporated 

 the addresses of President Barnard, Dr. 

 Draper, President White, and his own re- 

 marks, at the Tyndall banquet which fol- 

 lowed the close of his lectures in New York. 

 In his preface to the second English edition, 

 now republished here, Prof. Tyndall remarks 

 as follows of the object he had in view in 

 preparing the American lectures : " I have 

 sought to raise the wave-theory of light to 

 adequate clearness in the reader's mind, and 

 to show its power as an organizer of optical 

 phenomena. From what has been recently , 

 written on such questions, it is to be inferred 

 that the origin, scope, and warrant of physi- 

 cal theories generally, constitute a theme of 

 considerable interest to thoughtful minds. 

 On these points I have ventured, particular- 

 ly in the second and third lectures, to state 

 the views which my own I'eflections have 

 suggested to me. To produce a systematic 

 treatise on light was, of course, quite wide 

 of my aim. My desire, rather, was to throw 

 into a small compass an exposition for 

 which I should have been grateful at a cer- 

 tain period of my own studies. I wished, 

 in the first place, as the prime condition of 

 all satisfactory progress, to clear the reader's 

 mind of all indistinctness regarding element- 

 ary facts and conceptions, and to whet in- 

 cidentally the desire for further knowledge. 

 I wished, moreover, for the sake of that 

 numerous portion of the community who 

 are interested in the material results of 

 science, to trace effects to their causes, by 

 showing how such results receive their 

 primary vitalization from the thoughts of 

 men with no material end in view. The 

 ' Summary and Conclusion,' which might be 

 read as an introduction, is for the most part 

 devoted to this object." 



Facts and Fancies about Fish : The New 

 York Aquarium. New York : D. Ap- 

 pleton & Co. Pp. 15. 



This little pamphlet is Part I., No. 1, of 

 a series of popular natural history mono- 

 graphs by Mr. W. S. Ward, naturalist of 



