1872.] Notices of Books. or 
to mention and refute. The following may therefore serve as an 
example of the whole. Professor Smyth’s measurements of the 
entrance passage, and the accuracy of the angle thereof, are 
sought to be invalidated by the large differences among the 
observations of other travellers. But if the account of obser- 
vations made by the Scottish Astronomer-Royal be searched, 
it will be found that these were at least ten times more numerous 
than any of his predecessors, and made with far more powerful 
instruments too. Next, the astronomical explanation of the angle 
of the entrance passage begun thirty-five years ago, by Sir John 
Herschel, and completed by Smyth, is most unfairly set forth, 
and treated as of no moment, because shorn—/irst, of the patent 
fact of the entrance passage being im the plane of the astrono- 
mical meridian, even more correctly than many modern obser- 
vatories; second, of the consilient meridian data of both the 
Pleiades-stars and the Vernal Equinox, with the polar star of the 
passage a Draconis. 
With regard to this last star an attempt is made to show that 
in the star map, ‘“ Life and Work,” vol. ili., it is marked as of 
the second magnitude; whilst in Ptolemy’s time, it seems to have 
been of the third magnitude; and that Sir John Herschel says it 
is now only of the fourth magnitude. Yet what are the facts? 
In Sir John Herschel’s letter* to Howard Vyse, he connects 
the star not with the fourth but with the third magnitude; and 
Smyth, in the particular star-map alluded to, has not entered 
Draconis*as of the second, as M. Wackerbarth states, but of 
the fourth magnitude. 
We must, however, conclude our unhappy duty of pointing 
out the exact value of this most condensed example of mis- 
statement which it has thus far fallen to our lot to examine. We 
might, indeed, carry our examination much further, but that 
is needless ; and we close this paper with the feeling that if the 
supporters of the modern theory of the Pyramid have only such 
opposition to contend with, it may be matter of congratulation 
to them that their “‘enemy did write a book.” 
The Micrographic Dictionary: a Guide to the Examination and 
Investigation of the Structure and Nature of Microscopic 
Objects. By J. W. Grirrity, M.D., &c., the late ARTHUR 
Henrrey, F.R.S., F.L.S., &c. Third Edition. Edited by 
y W: Grirrire, M.D., &c.; assisted by the Rev. M. J. . 
BERKELEY, M.A., F.L.S., and T. Rupert Jones, F.G.S, &c. | 
Parts I. to III. London: J. Van Voorst. 
Tue rapid progress of Microscopical Science since the publica- 
tion of the last edition of this well-known book of reference 
in 1860, has rendered the work of revision and addition abso- 
* See Vyse’s Pyramids of Gizeh, vol. ii., ps 170 (foot-note). 
