THE ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 201 



Elements of Natural Philosophy took its final form and was issued in 1873. 

 In the Appendix a few typical kinetic problems appear exactly as they 

 were originally written down in Tail's Edinburgh Sketch of 1863. With 

 the exception of 43 pages devoted to the composition and resolution of 

 forces and couples, and essentially reproduced from the Glasgow pamphlet, 

 the Elements of Natural Philosophy of 279 pages is simply an abridgement 

 of the Treatise on Natural Philosophy. 



To the earnest capable student it was and still is a mine of wealth ; but 

 what hours of misery it caused to many a hapless youth! I remember a 

 student from abroad coming in the summer session and asking Tail what 

 he should read so as to prepare . himself for the Natural Philosophy class 

 in the succeeding winter. Tait with a smile took up " Little T and T'," said 

 that this was the text-book in use, and recommended the youth to read the 

 first ten pages and come back to report progress. In a few weeks he 

 returned in the direst distress. He had read and re-read the introductory 

 sections, and his mind was an absolute blank ! 



Indeed, except for the senior students and for men looking forward to 

 Honours, the Elements was to a large extent a sealed book and was indeed 

 in certain parts more difficult than the larger work. It was too concise for 

 the ordinary average student, who never got deep enough into the subject 

 to appreciate its aim and scope. The authors wrote with their eye on 

 what was to come ; the average student was content with what little 

 knowledge he could gain now. J. M. Barrie, in his brightly written An 

 Edinburgh Eleven, calls the book "The Student's first glimpse of Hades." 

 The sentence in the Preface of the Elements which speaks of it as being 

 " designed more especially for use in schools and junior classes in Universities " 

 must have been penned with a chuckle on the part of Tait at any rate. 



Clerk Maxwell reviewed the Elements in Nature, March 27, 1873 

 (Vol. vn), and expressed his 



" sympathy with the efforts of men, thoroughly conversant with all that mathematicians 

 have achieved, to divest scientific truths of that symbolic language in which 

 mathematicians have left them, and to clothe them in words, developed by legitimate 

 methods from our mother tongue but rendered precise by clear definitions, and 

 familiar by well-rounded statements." 



He did not however appraise the work from the point of view of 

 the tiro. 



The first edition of the large Treatise was very soon sold out ; and the 

 T. 26 



