6q8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



wireless telephony, including the Poulsen arc generator, and the Alexanderson 

 alternator for generating continuous waves. The book concludes with a short 

 account of earth-current signalling and miscellaneous valve apparatus. It 

 is one which should be in the hands of every wireless man who has to deal with 

 valves (and what wireless man does not in these days ?). It is far and away the 

 most complete account that has yet been published of the valve, and its uses 

 in wireless telegraphy, and marks a distinct step in the amount of published 

 information about this most vital and important instrument. It is no exag- 

 geration to say that the valve opens up more possibilities for signalling of all 

 kinds than any other piece of apparatus that has been brought to perfection 

 in the last half -century, and it is for this reason that Major Stanley's book is 

 so opportune and so valuable. 



The Oliver-Sharpey Lectures on the Feeding of Nations. A Study in Applied 

 Physiology. By Ernest H. Starling, C.M.G., M.D., F.R.C.P., 

 F.R.S., Chairman of the Royal Society Food (War) Committee, 

 Honorary Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Food. [Pp. ix + 146.] 

 (London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1919. Price 5s. net.) 

 In these lectures the scientific principles on which the feeding of a nation 

 should be based are explained with great clearness, and it is shown how 

 the application of these principles to the problem presented by the limitation 

 of the food-supply of this country during the latter part of the war enabled 

 the difficult situation thus presented to be successfully handled. The con- 

 ditions obtaining both in this country and in Germany are described, and 

 the reasons for the system of rationing adopted in this country are set out. 

 The importance of the food-supply of a nation in time of war was realised 

 at a very early stage in the war by the Physiological Committee of the Royal 

 Society, and it is largely due to the investigations initiated by the Food 

 (War) Committee of the Royal Society that the necessary information was 

 available when the limitation of the food-supply of the nation came about 

 later. As Chairman of the Food (War) Committee, and as Scientific Adviser 

 to the Ministry of Food, Prof. Starling was not only in intimate contact 

 with the question of food-supply during the war, but was very largely respon- 

 sible for the measures which were adopted with such success for feeding 

 this country in the most critical period of the war. This little book should 

 be read not only by physiologists and those interested in the study of food, 

 but by all intelligent men and women. ^ o 



Moments of Genius. By Arthur Lynch. [Pp. xi+ 257.] (London: 



Philip Allen & Co., 1919.) 

 Colonel Arthur Lynch has produced a very interesting book. He analyses 

 twenty characters, namely, two types each of the Soldier, Orator, Stoic, 

 Beauty, Artist, Poet (Southern and English), Philosopher, Mathematician, 

 and Biologist. Examples of the three latter groups are Aristotle, Descartes, 

 Abel, Galois, Schwann, and Darwin. Each character is presented in a 

 short essay which is selected as the most dramatic moment of the subject's 

 life, and the subject is figured to us in a few able lines. Colonel Lynch is 

 evidently a man of very wide sympathies and knowledge, possessing much 

 of the true poetical capacity for detecting the vital spot. He is also, what 

 I personally always admire, a hero-worshipper. This is not what I have 

 called a mean book written by, for, and about mean people — that is, the kind 

 of book which our modern reviewers seem to delight in. Colonel Lynch's 

 book is one of high ideals — after all, the only thing worth reading about. 

 When men become more civilised they will understand that their real gods 

 are their greatest and best men. -d ^ 



