362 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



reviewer, to be a tendency with some people to disparage the 

 work of earlier civilisations as compared with that of ancient 

 Greece ; but there is no doubt that strictly deductive science 

 was first founded by the Greeks. 



There is an interesting article by A. Favaro on apocryphal 

 writings of Galileo in the Boll, di Bibl. e St. delle Sci. Mat. 



(191 7, 19, 33-43). 



W. H. Bussey (Atner. Math. Monthly, 191 7, 24, 199-207) 

 gives a very useful account of that part of the work of Mau- 

 rolycus on arithmetic (1575) which deals with the method of 

 complete induction. This paper serves to correct a minor 

 error into which Moritz Cantor fell when attributing, in an 

 article of 1902, the use of the method to Maurolycus instead of 

 to Pascal, as he had in 1900 in the latest edition of the second 

 volume of his Geschichte. 



H. S. Carslaw (Journ. of Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S. Wales, 191 6, 

 50, 130-42) suggests that there are three distinct stages in the 

 development of Napier's idea of a logarithm. In the first he 

 was concerned with a one-one correspondence between the terms 

 of a geometrical progression and those of an arithmetical pro- 

 gression, and there are traces of this in the Constructio and in 

 the derivation of the word " logarithm." In the second he has 

 passed from this correspondence, and his logarithms are given 

 by the well-known kinematical definition which forms the 

 foundation of the theory of the Constructio. In the third, 

 referred to in the Appendix to the Constructio, he reached 

 the idea of a logarithm as defined by the property that the 

 logarithms of proportional numbers have equal differences, with 

 the additional condition that the logarithms of two numbers 

 are given. Further, it is shown that logarithms to the base 10 — 

 as we know them — are Napier's logarithms just as much as the 

 logarithms of his Canon. Cf. Science Progress, 191 6, 10, 434. 



G. Milhaud {Rev. gen. des Sciences, 191 7, 28, 332-7) dis- 

 cusses the attitude of Descartes in 1637 and 1638 to the De 

 maximis et minimis which Fermat sent him at the end of 1637. 

 Although Descartes 's criticisms were by no means profound, his 

 attitude may possibly be explained, not merely by the prob- 

 ability that he was offended by Fermat 's interference with the 

 subject (of tangents to curves) of which he was particularly 

 proud, but also because he felt that Fermat did not proceed 

 with quite the generality that seemed to him necessary. This 



