362 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



valuable chapter, however, is the last, which deals with the methods employed 

 in the separation and isolation of the various substances described ; it contains 

 a great mass of information in a very compact form. The book can be strongly 

 recommended to chemists of all shades of opinion whether specially interested in 

 biological problems or not, as it deals with a number of substances not as yet 

 described in the text-books, but none the less of such importance that even the 

 pure chemist cannot afford to ignore them. 



P. H. 



Principles of Metallurgy. By Arthur H. Hiorns. Second Edition. [Pp. xiv 

 + 389 ; '57 illustrations.] (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1914. 

 Price 6s.) 



The first edition of this useful summary appeared in 1895, and has proved to be of 

 value to teachers and students in technical schools and classes. It was time that 

 something was done to bring the book up-to-date, but Mr. Hiorns, who was until 

 lately the Head of the Metallurgy Department, Birmingham Municipal Technical 

 School, can hardly be congratulated on the thoroughness of his revision. The 

 changes in the text are few and unimportant, and the result is that the book may 

 be called a very fair presentation of the state of knowledge in metallurgy in the 

 late Victorian period. Those who already possess the first edition need not 

 consider the desirability of obtaining the second, but it is otherwise in the case 

 of new students who have neither, and especially with those who have a taste for 

 the historical side of their subject. 



The Quaternary Ice Age. By W. B. Wright. [Pp. xxiv + 464, with numerous 

 illustrations.] (London : Macmillan & Co , 1914. Price 17s.) 



The dedication by Penck and Bruckner of "Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter " to the 

 author of "The Great Ice Age," is sufficient testimony to the impression made 

 by James Geikie upon European thought. Since, however, the issue of the last 

 edition of the Edinburgh professor's comprehensive work, researches on glacial 

 phenomena have multiplied in every continent. Mr. W. B. Wright has now brought 

 together the results of these investigations, in a book that in size and excellence 

 of production will stand fitly beside that of his predecessor. His choice of 

 illustrations, including many due to his own work in the field, would in itself 

 commend this treatise. 



In some respects the book is almost too modern, and gives but a slight 

 impression of the long struggle between the supporters of the view that continental 

 ice-sheets once spread across vast surfaces of land, and those who, on the other 

 hand, urged the efficacy of ice-rafts and running water. Hall and Playfair, the 

 extreme but triumphant Agassiz, Lyell, erring on the side of caution, Andrew Ramsay, 

 and Goodchild, a pioneer in various branches of geology, alike find no mention in 

 the index. T. F. Jamieson, as is indeed just, meets with full and honourable 

 recognition. This aloofness from the historic aspect has the merit of freeing 

 the book from controversy. The author's personal views are simply stated, and 

 his advocacy of isostasy as an explanation of recent changes of sea-level finds much 

 justification in his own researches and is by no means forced upon the reader. 



We may feel that Mr. Wright, in adopting the view that eskers are mostly 

 formed in water near ice-margins, overlooks the possibility of their development 

 under motionless stagnating ice. In referring the walls of cirques to frost-action, 

 the conclusions of Matthes on " nivation," as a first cause of the cirque-hollow, should 



