106 Notices of Books. (January, 
of those who might be so simple-minded as to publish, on their 
own account, important contributions to astronomical science, 
under the delusion that they would be studied during their own 
lifetime. 
Mr. Proctor has the high merit—very rare among avowedly 
popular teachers—of digging, with his own hands, into these 
depths of astronomical literature, and of directly presenting to 
readers of all classes judiciously selected and well displayed 
examples of their treasures. 
The second series of ‘‘ Light Science for Leisure Hours” is 
one of the latest of these collections of nuggets (that is up to 
this moment of writing; we cannot tell what may happen during 
the short time that will elapse before this is published), and is 
fully equal in interest and value to its predecessors. 
A considerable portion of the volume is devoted to meteoro- 
logical problems, and the interminable ‘‘ Gulf Stream” discussion, 
into the lists of which tournament Mr. Proctor has valiantly 
entered, the device on his shield being surface evaporation over 
large tropical areas. He repeats Maury’s demonstration of the 
insufficiency of Herschel’s trade wind explanation, and Herschel’s 
refutation of Maury’s and Humboldt’s variation of the specific 
gravity theory, and then proceeds to show that Dr. Carpenter’s 
lump of ice, at one end of a rectangular aquarium trough, is a 
fallacious representation of the arctic ice in arctic waters, 
inasmuch as the ar¢tic area is so much smaller than the tropical 
that the trough should have been v-shaped, with the ice at the 
angle, in order to be at all representative. There can be no doubt 
that this simple quantitative difficulty is fatal to Dr. Car- 
penter’s large estimate of the potency of the arctic ice-cold 
stream. 
Taking a cool outside view of this controversy, it presents one 
very interesting feature, namely that each combatant succeeds in 
refuting the sufficiency of his opponents explanation, but (as far 
as those above-named are concerned) all have failed to refute its 
actuality. Hence we may venture to conclude that the errors on 
all sides are quantitative only, and that the actual oceanic 
circulation is due to the combined, or rather co-operating action, 
of all the forces on behalf of which the champions are 
respectively combating. We say no more, lest the infection of 
the fight should come upon us and deform our critical impar- 
tiality. 
The other essays are on “ The Coming Transit of Venus ” of 
course, ‘‘ The Ever Widening World of Stars;’’ Movements in 
the Star Depths,” ‘*The Great Nebula in Orion,” ‘*The Sun’s 
True Atmosphere,” ‘‘ Something Wrong with the Sun,” ‘* News 
from Herschel's Planet,’ ‘‘ The Two Comets of 1868,” ‘* Comets 
of Short Period,” ‘‘The Climate of Great Britain,’ ‘‘ The Low 
Barometer of the Antarctic Temperate Zone.” 
We cannot of course describe or discuss the contents of such 
a tga bal 
