[From Nature, Vol. .] 



XCVIII. Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy. 



TH yew 1867 will long be remembered by natural philosophers as that 

 of the publication of the first volume of "Thomson and Tait." They had long 

 Irrn waiting for the book, and in the preface the delay was accounted for 

 by the necessity of anticipating the wants of the other three volumes, in which 

 the remaining divisions of Natural Philosophy were to be treated. The reader 

 wa* also reminded, that if in any passage he failed to appreciate the aim of 

 the authors, the reason might be that what he was studying was in reality 

 a prospective contrivance, the true aim of which would not become manifest 

 until oA>r the perusal of that part of the work for which it was designed to 

 prepare the way. 



Wliat we have had before us now for twelve years was. the authors 

 reminded us, strictly preliminary matter. The plan of the whole treatise 

 could only be guessed at from the scale on which its foundations were con- 

 structed. 



In these days, when so much of the science of our best men is dribbled 

 ut of them in the fragmentary and imperfectly elaborated form of the memoirs 

 which they contribute to learned societies, and when the work of making 

 Unka is relegated to professional bookmakers, who understand about as much 

 of one subject as of another, it was something to find that even one man of 

 known power had not shrunk from so great a work ; it was more when it 

 appeared tliat two men of mark were joined together in the undertaking ; and 

 when at hist the plan of the work was described in the preface, and the 

 scale on which its foundations were being laid was exhibited in the vast sub- 

 structure of Preliminary Matter, the feeling with which we began to contemplate 

 the mighty whole was one in which delight was almost overpowered by awe. 



