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VII. Notices respecting New Books. 



delation des Experiences pour determiner les principales Ids phy- 

 siques, et les donnees numeriques qui entrent dans le Calcul des 

 Machines a Vapeur. By M. Regnault*. 1 vol. of 800 pp. 4to, 

 toith a folio volume of plates. 



SCIENCE, like literature and the arts, has now and then its 

 works of luxury. We have a proof of it in the publication which 

 is the subject of this article ; it is indeed one of the most splendid 

 that has ever enriched science. We shall not pause at the beauty of 

 the typographic execution, although the perfection of the plates, the 

 great scale on which they are done, are rarely met with in works of 

 this kind. But here the luxury lies in the very substance of the 

 work, in the number, the precision and the details of the experiments, 

 in the variety and perfection of the apparatus, and in the richness of 

 the results. 



The aim with which M. Regnault began his researches, was the 

 determination of the principal physical laws and the numerical data, 

 which enter into the calculation of steam-engines. Hitherto the 

 theoretical calculation of these machines has been constantly based 

 upon laws which could only be considered as hypotheses; but me- 

 chanicians have long asked for a general work which should establish 

 these fundamental laws upon a series of direct experiments, executed 

 with the means of precision which the physical sciences now offer us. 

 The French government having conceived the happy and noble idea 

 of executing this work, placed the necessary funds at the disposal of 

 M. Regnault ; this distinguished physicist has profited by it to raise 

 to science, one of those monuments which are durable in proportion 

 as the foundation on which they rest is more solid, and the style is 

 more severe and simple. That is to say, that M. Regnault deter- 

 mined to penetrate to the bottom of his subject, that he has not 

 allowed himself to be carried away by any hypothesis, and that he 

 has shown himself in physics, what Saussure did in geology, one of 

 those philosophers whose observations will remain, whatever may be 

 the phases through which science is destined to pass. 



While rendering full and entire homage to the qualities which 

 constitute M. Regnault one of the first physicists of this aera, we are 

 far from questioning the merit of those who, following another 

 course, advance science in a manner different indeed, but who leave 

 behind them traces no less deep. There are men whose creative 

 imaginations, opening out a totally new path, march to the conquest 

 of unexpected truth, with a good fortune and success which are a 

 consequence of the divination that produces a perfect appreciation 

 of the laws of nature, joined to the inspiration of genius. The phy- 

 sicists of this school, if the name of school can be applied to that 

 which is not a method, but a gift of nature, differ essentially from 



* This interesting review and summary of the beautiful researches of M. 

 Regnault we have transferred from the pages of the BibUotheque Universelle 

 dn Gfnhe ; it is from the pen of M. de la Rive. 



