Nov. I, 1877] 



NATURE 



size is to be applied to the yarn ; to what diseases or modes 

 of decomposition it is liable ; and how it may be pre- 

 served from mildew or mischievous changes. The book 

 has every right to be regarded as the only important 

 treatise on the subject which has yet appeared, and, as 

 such, we would recommend it to all who are interested in 

 the production of one of our chief staples. T. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Physiological Tables for the Use of Students. Compiled 

 by Edward B. Aveling, D.Sc, F.L.S. (London: 

 Hamilton, Adams, and Co.) 



We are at a loss to find any excuse for the publication of 

 these tables, which no one, we presume, would attempt to 

 justify except on the plea that they may be useful in cram- 

 ming students so as to pass the multifarious superficial 

 examinations which are a blot upon our educational 

 system. 



They are unphilosophical in their plan, and altogether 

 unreliable in their details. Some idea of the nature and 

 value of the information which is here put up, as it were, 

 into separate pigeon-holes for the use of the unwary, 

 may be gathered from the following quotations. Nervous 

 tissue, we are told, contains 15 per cent, of fats, thus 

 classified : — 



Fats, 15 per cent, in white, ( Oleo-phosphoric acid. 



^ ■" ^ V Olem ; margarm ; palmitm. 



( Cholesterin. 



5 per rent, in gray. 



Would Dr. Aveling like to write a short essay upon 

 oleo-phosphoric acid 1 Has he never heard of such 

 bodies as glycerin -phosphoric acid and its derivative 

 lecithin ? 



Or to quote from Table IV., where Dr. Aveling writes 

 on the causes of the circulation :— 



/ Impulse of heart. 

 Elasticity of arte- 

 ries. 



c.-vuse.s of 

 Circulation, 



Capillary 

 Proofs. 



Force. 



Muscular pressure 

 , on veins. 



1. Alterations in diameter of cipil- 

 liries. 



2. Alterations of velocity of blood 

 flowing through them 



3. Movement of blood after excision 

 of heart in cold-blooded amimals. 



4. Emptying of arteries after death. 

 5 Secretion after death. 



6. First movement of blood in em- 

 bryo towards, not from, the heart. 



7. Foetus without heart has organs 

 developed. 



8. Degeneration of heart during life 

 without much alteration in the 

 circulation. 



9. Heart working well, and yet cir- 

 culation through som; part ceases. 



10, Asphyxia. 



Would it not be an admirable exercise to set the above 

 hnes to intending candidates in physiology and ask them 

 to criticise them 1 Our readers will do so for themselves. 



In the table referring to the sense organs we are con- 

 fidently told that the nerve centres for the special sense 

 of touch are the thalaini optici, that the centres of the 

 special sense of smell are the olfactory lobes, that the 

 centres of sight are the corpora quadrigemina, the corpora 

 geniculata, and the thalami optici. 



But the above examples are more than sufficient to 

 prove how dangero js a catalogue of mistakes Dr. Aveling 

 has presented us with. 



If science is to be used as a discipline in education, let 

 It be fully and accurately taught ; let us not imitate the 

 old scholastic routine which forced unpalatable jargon in 

 the form of "propria quae maribus," &c., upon the un- 

 wilhng student, and refuse to follow it in that which is its 

 merit— its accuracy. A. G. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



{The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he unda-take to return^ 

 or to correspond with the writers of rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is. taken of anonymous communuations. 



The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters as 

 short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great that it 

 is impossible otherwise to ensure the appearance even of com- 

 munications containing interesting and novel facts.] 



Indium in British Blendes 



It will be a matter of some interest to English mineralogists 

 and chemists to know that certain blendes of Durham and, I 

 believf , of Cumberland contain Indium in appreciable quantities. 

 This fact has been made out by a very skilfully-conducted analysis 

 by Dr. Flight in the laboratory attached to this department. 



The work in the laboratoy has, through the past two years, 

 been almost exclusively devoted to the analysis of minerals 

 selected from the division of the collection which is in process of 

 being catalogued, and for which the crystallographic work has 

 long been in progress. 



When I gave the particular blendes in question to Dr. Flight 

 for analysis, the grounds for their selection were that they were 

 British, and that one of them in particular resembled certain 

 foreign blendes which contain the rare metals found in association 

 with this mineral. 



The object of this letter is to secure a prompt announcement 

 of Dr. Flight's having found Indium in the blende in question. 

 He will in due time communicate further deta.ls of the analysis 

 of the blende and of an elegant process by which he at once 

 separates the Indium Sulphide from the blende. 



Nevil Story Maskelyne 



Mineral Department, British Museum, October 30 



The Radiometer and its Lessons 



Will you allow me to make a few remarks in reply to to Dr. 

 Carpenter's letter on " The Radiometer and its Lessons," pub- 

 lished in the last number of Nature, and to try to show that I 

 had good grounds for the opinion I expressed at the late meeting 

 of the British Association in reference to his article on the same 

 subject in the Nineteenth Century ? 



Nearly the whole of the first three columns of Dr. Carpenter's 

 letter is devoted to proving that he " was not influenced, when 

 writing on the radiometer, by any animus arising from [his] per- 

 sonal antagonism to Mr. Crookes on another subject." As I 

 never in any way charged him with being thus influenced, I do 

 not think that this part of his letter calls for any further remark 

 on my part than an expression of my sincere regret that it should 

 have been possible for him to think that I intended to make 

 such a charge. 



Dr. Carpenter devotes the rest of his letter to showing that he 

 had "adequate justification" for "making it appear that Mr. 

 Crookes had put a wrong interpretation on his own results," and 

 thus proves very conclusively that I had " adequate justification " 

 for supposing it possible that he may have intended to make 

 this appear in his article in the Nineteenth Century. 



In order to make out his "justification," Dr. Carpenter sets 

 himself to prove (i) that Mr. Crookes puts forward the " direct 

 impact of the waves " as affording " a definite interpretation " of 

 the motion of the radiometer, and (2) that he claimed "the 

 discovery of a * new force ' or ' a new mode of force.' " 



With regard to the first of these points, I think that few per- 

 sons can have read or heard Mr. Crookes's accounts of his 

 investigations without having observed how careful he was to 

 reserve his judgment as to the cause of the remarkable effects he 

 had discovered, and neither to give out as conclusive any ex- 

 planation of his own, nor to adopt any of those suggested by 

 others until, chiefly through his own further experiments, one of 

 them had been shown to rest on suflficient evidence. It is true 

 that on one occasion he uses the following words (quoted by Dr. 

 C rpentei) : — " My own impression is that the repulsion accom- 

 panying radiation is directly due to the impact of the waves on 

 the surface of the moving mass, and not secondarily through the 

 intervention of air-currents, electricity, or evaporation and con- 

 densation," and that, in several places in his earlier papers, 

 he shows a leaning towards the same hypothesis ; but this is a 

 very different thing from having adopted this view as a " definite 

 interpretation" of the phenomena. Even Dr. Carpenter does 

 not attempt to show that Mr. Crookes ever, in so many words, 

 committed himself to this theory, but concludes that he held it 



