[From Naturt, Vol. xvn.] 



XCI. Tail's "Thermodynamics." 



THIS book, aa we are told in the preface, has grown out of two articles 

 contributed in 1864 by Prof. Tait to the North British Review. This journal, 

 about that time, inserted a good many articles in which scientific subjects were 

 discussed in scientific language, and in which, instead of the usual attempts 

 to conciliate the unscientific reader by a series of relapses into irrelevant and 

 incoherent writing, his attention was maintained by awakening a genuine interest 

 in the subject. 



The attempt was so far successful that the publishers of the Review were 

 urged by men of science, especially engineers, to reprint these essays of Prof. 

 Tait, but the Review itself soon afterwards became extinct. 



Prof. Tait added to the two essays a mathematical sketch of the funda- 

 mental principles of thermodynamics, and in this form the book was published 

 in 1868. In the present edition, though there are many additions and improve- 

 ments, the form of the book is essentially the same. 



Whether on account of these external circumstances, or from internal 

 causes, it is impossible to compare this book either with so-called popular 

 treatises or with those of a more technical kind. 



In the popular treatise, whatever shreds of the science are allowed to 

 appear, are exhibited in an exceedingly diffuse and attenuated form, apparently 

 with the hope that the mental faculties of the reader, though they would 

 reject any stronger food, may insensibly become saturated with scientific phraseo- 

 logy, provided it is diluted with a sufficient quantity of more familiar language. 

 In this way, by simple reading, the student may become possessed of the 

 phrases of the science without having been put to the trouble of thinking a 

 single thought about it. The loss implied in such an acquisition can be estimated 



