1 66 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



while others, like the Brook Farm, were entire failures. The most celebrated of 

 all these experiments was probably the " New Australia" community in Paraguay, 

 and the story of its birth and eventual collapse is highly amusing in some places. 



The writer discusses in the next two sections the minimum wage and the 

 effects of the false statistics of Marx and Henry George. He attributes the desire 

 for absolute equality to artificial inequality such as existed in France prior to the 

 first revolution. Mr. Mallock also discusses " Equality of Opportunity," one of 

 the chief demands of all revolutionaries. He also suggests reforms for all these 

 grievances. 



In the seventh and last section Mr. Mallock discusses among other things the 

 Russian revolution, to which, unfortunately, the writer has had but small space to 

 devote, as the book was nearly complete at the time : such as he has written, 

 however, is terse and well expressed. 



C. C. Ross. 



Britain's Heritage of Science. By Arthur Schuster, F.R.S., and Arthur 

 E. Shipley, F.R.S. [Pp. xv + 334, with 15 portraits.] (London: Con- 

 stable & Co., 1917. Price Ss. 6d. net.) 



IF it be true that good wine needs no bush, then, indeed, this book needs no 

 recommendation. From such apparently unpromising sources as the Encyclopedia 

 Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography the authors have produced 

 a valuable and fascinating record of the work of British scientists. Nor is it 

 merely a catalogue of achievement ; space is found for personality and anecdote, 

 and the larger part of the book, devoted to Physical Science, might almost claim 

 to be a history of the science itself, so overwhelmingly large is the British share im 

 its development. Mathematics is not included directly, nor is the work of living 

 men discussed save in the few cases where the omission would have conveyed a 

 false impression of the part which Great Britain has played in the recent progress 

 of science. Some abridged chapter headings will, perhaps, best indicate the scope 

 of the book : The Ten Landmarks of Physical Science — dealing with the main 

 stream of research from Roger Bacon through Gilbert, Newton, Dalton, Faraday, 

 Kelvin, and Clerk Maxwell ; The Heritage— academic and non-academic— through 

 the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries ; Industrial Applications ; 

 Scientific Institutions ; Biology in the Middle Ages ; and then chapters devoted 

 severally to Botany, Zoology, Physiology, and Geology. 



With such a wealth of material at hand it is difficult to make a selection for 

 quotation or comment. One must suffice — Newton's own account of his dis- 

 coveries quoted from an MS. among the Portsmouth Papers : 



" . . . The same year, in May, I found the method of tangents of Gregory and 

 Slusius, and in November had the direct method of fluxions, and the next year, 

 in January, had the theory of colours, and in the May following I had entrance 

 into the inverse method of fluxions. And the same year I began to think of 

 gravity extending to the orb of the moon, and . . . from Kepler's rule ... I 

 deduced that the forces which keep the planets in their orbs must be reciprocally 

 as the squares of their distances from the centres about which they revolve. . . . 

 All this was in the two Plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in 

 the prime of my age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more 

 than at any time since." 



Newton was twenty-five years old at the commencement of this period and in 

 his fourth year at Cambridge, which he entered in 1661, "not being considered fit 

 to be a farmer," as his father was. 



D. O. W. 



