54 6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



use are simple and adequate, and easy to be understood by those who have 

 no great knowledge of mathematics. The book can be safely recommended to 

 those who wish to gain a knowledge of the salient features of a wireless tele- 

 graph transmission, but who have not been able to obtain the scientific 

 equipment to enable them to make it a study of professional importance. It is 

 not a book, however, merely for the amateur. It contains information about 

 such recent developments as the Lieben and Reisz current relay, and the con- 

 tinuous wave system which Marconi has developed during the last year or two, 

 which should be useful to all wireless engineers. It fills a gap between the 

 classical works of Fleming and Zenneck and the popular handbook which sets 

 out to explain to an amateur how he may work a wireless station at home 

 with the smallest possible expenditure of time and money. Now that amateurs 

 have been forcibly prevented from continuing their experiments by the war, it is 

 to be hoped that the many enthusiastic people, who have expended their energies 

 on wireless stations in their homes, may take advantage of the opportunity this 

 book affords them, of gaining a scientific appreciation of the phenomena they 

 have observed. 



CHEMISTRY 



Spectrum Analysis. Applied to Biology and Medicine. By the late C. A. 

 Macmunn, M.A., M.D. With a Preface by F. W. Gamble. With illus- 

 trations. [Pp. xiv + 112.] (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1914. 

 Price 55. net.) 



There is considerable pathos in this scientific work. The late Dr. Macmunn 

 was one of the many enthusiasts who take up various branches of science as 

 amateurs, but nevertheless succeed in developing them to a large extent. He 

 was born in Ireland in 1852, was trained at Trinity College, Dublin, and was 

 engaged in an arduous medical practice at Wolverhampton. In spite of this he 

 had time to devote his leisure to the subject of this book — which is not exactly at 

 the centre of clinical work. In addition, he was an enthusiastic volunteer and 

 served with distinction in the South African war, being noticed in dispatches. 

 Largely as a result of this, his health broke down, and Professor F. W. Gamble, 

 who gives an excellent preface to the work, thinks that his death in 191 1 was 

 probably traceable to the effects of the campaign. Dr. Macmunn was made a 

 county J. P. and a Life Governor of Birmingham University. The salient point 

 of his researches was pressed upon the theme of animal and vegetable pigments. 

 " No doubt," says Professor Gamble, " the professional physiologist will find 

 ground for criticism in regard to Macmunn's treatment of certain problems of 

 chromatology ; but when his isolated position is considered, his scanty leisure, 

 his want of laboratory equipment, it is not the occasional incompleteness of 

 treatment that we wonder at, but at the fact that under conditions that ordinarily 

 occupy the whole life of a medical man, Macmunn not only fulfilled the duties 

 of a magistrate and a colonel of the Territorial Force, but found time and energy 

 to publish original observations which have always to be reckoned with in the 

 medical and biological study of pigments." As it is, the little book will be useful 

 to all medical men. It is lucidly written and gives very complete information, 

 not only regarding the spectroscope but about pigments — about which doctors 

 should have certainly some knowledge. In addition, the author has certainly 

 added details of considerable value to our knowledge of the subject. 



