1899] THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION 67 
collector in the field to procure common objects such as he otherwise might 
overlook, and this seems to us a thoroughly valuable suggestion. Mr. 8. 
Sinclair describes “The Australian Museum,” of which he is the secretary. The 
last paper in the volume, by Mr. F. A. Bather, of the British Museum (Nat. 
Hist.), describes ‘some Russian Museums” visited by him when attending the 
International Geological Congress in 1897. The account of the Caucasian 
Museum in Tiflis has a timely interest, since its curator, Dr. G. Radde, has just 
been awarded the great gold medal of the Russian Geographical Society. Other 
museums described are those of St. Petersburg, Reval, Jurjev (Dorpat), Moscow, 
Saratov, Astrakhan, and Theodosia. The notes are mostly geological and 
zoological, and are followed by the drawing of a few morals, professedly 
referring to Russia, but peculiarly applicable to museums nearer home. 
As usual, a few reviews and notes close the volume; but we regret to see 
that the Secretary has not furnished any report of the discussion following the 
papers. Such reports in former years, despite occasional verbosity, contained 
much useful matter that otherwise would not have achieved publication. We 
trust that this will be remedied at the next meeting, which we are informed is 
to be held at Brighton during the first week of July. 
CRITICISM WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE. 
Views on some of the Phenomena of Nature, as seen from the Workshop, 
the Factory, and the Field. Part Il. By James WALKER. 8vo, 
pp. 187. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Company, Ltd., 1899. 
Price 2s. 6d. 
Mr. Walker is a paradoxer of the first water. His quarrel with modern 
science is partly verbal; but the greater part of his booklet is taken up with 
denunciation of the undulatory theory of light. He takes fright at the large- 
ness of the numbers used to describe the number of vibrations per second in the 
motion that is the physical concomitant of what we call red light, and imagines 
that the writing out of these by numbers across a whole line of print is an 
argument against their existence. He has still to learn the truth that largeness 
and smallness are purely relative terms, and that the billionth of an inch is as 
truly a magnitude as the distance from the earth to the sun. It would be vain 
to attempt any criticism in a short notice. Enough to say, that his representa- 
tion of the modern theory of light and radiant heat is a travesty, and shows 
extraordinary ignorance of the elements of wave motion. In support of this 
statement we give one quotation as a sample. In his description of the pro- 
duction of lightning according to the science of to-day, he says, “ All, from every 
single molecule of that vapour, these motions and quivering waves of ether 
somehow drop the molecules, forsake them, abandon them ; and although being 
nothing themselves but the simple quivers of ether, somehow collect themselves 
into a flash of an irresistible force of destruction, occupying not one-half of a 
cubic inch of space,” etc. We congratulate our author on this very remarkable 
theory of the production of the lightning flash. It is his alone! It may be 
well to point out that, although Mr. Walker scoffs at scientific men for their 
gratuitous invention of the ether, he himself falls into the same pit by invent- 
ing “electrogene,” which, so far as may be gathered from the vague references 
that are made to it, is a kind of material squirted out from the sun. To expose 
the fallacy of most of his arguments would be wasted labour. Magna est 
veritas, et prevalebit ; and it is doubtful if tomes of argument could ever convince 
Mr. Walker of his sublime ignorance of the real basis of our ethereal dynamics. 
C. G. K. 
