46 



NATURE 



[September i8, 1919 



scientific interest, and the treasurer was instructed 

 to record such communications in the minutes. 



The two clubs continued for fifty-four years to 

 live apart and in amity. But the fervid reforming 

 zeal of the younger fraternity, having gained its 

 first object, and having no obvious cause for 

 further activity, gradually slackened. Many 

 Fellows of the Society were members of both 

 clubs, and it slowly dawned upon even the most 

 conservative intellects that the co-existence of two 

 dining clubs in connection with the same society 

 was inconvenient and unnecessary. At last, in 

 the summer of 1901, the Philosophical was for- 

 mally incorporated with the Royal Society Club. 



The " Annals " of the older corporation having 

 been published in the summer of 1917, it was unani- 

 mously decided that the history of the younger 

 fraternity should also be put into the more durable 

 form of print, and that the task of compiling the 

 narrative should be entrusted to Prof. Bonney, 

 who happened to be the oldest surviving member 

 of the dissolved" club. It required no little courage 

 to undertake this labour, and the veteran professor 

 deserves the best thanks of the united Club and 

 of the public for having accomplished it. His 

 volume of "Annals of the Philosophical Club" is 

 divided by him into two sections. The first of 

 these, dealing with the business done at the meet- 

 ings, in chronological order from the beginning 

 to the close, shows from year to year the organ- 

 isation and work of the club, the gradual dis- 

 appearance of the old members and the advent of 

 their successors. To the minutes that record 

 these particulars the editor has added a short but 

 adequate biographical notice of each of the new 

 members. 



The second and more interesting and im- 

 portant section contains the reports of the 

 verbal " communications " made at the meetings, 

 in chronological order, from May 6, 1847, when 

 the institution was fairly started on its career, 

 down to the time of the amalgamation of the two 

 clubs. It was these communication's which gave 

 its distinctive character to the Philosophical Club, 

 and it was well that this feature of its existence 

 should be faithfully recorded. Prof. Bonney must 

 have had difficulty in choosing how best to deal 

 with them. He finally decided to place them all 

 together by themselves in his second section, keep- 

 ing them in chronological order under the dates 

 of the successive meetings at which they were 

 made. He has given us the whole available 

 material, and has evidently treated it with the 

 most patient care, taking infinite pains to verify 

 and illustrate the text. Nevertheless, as a matter 

 of convenient and effective arrangement we ven- 

 ture to think that it would have made the book 

 more attractive had the two sections been fused 

 into one continuous narrative — in other words, 

 had the "communications," instead of being 

 divorced from the account of the business meet- 

 ings, been inserted, where they were actually 

 made, after the business. At many meetings 

 there was no business, and no mention of these 

 I;JO. 2603, VOL. 104] 



meetings was required in section i. of the volume, 

 but on turning to section ii. we may find for the 

 same year a succession of meetings recorded, at 

 which various communications were made. Thus 

 the whole doings of the club in the year 1867 are 

 comprised in eight lines in the first section, while 

 in the second section reference is made to seven 

 meetings in that year, each marked by communica- 

 tions which occupy in all four pages of the 

 volume. Again, the business transacted in 1869 

 is summed up in two short lines, while in the 

 second section the communications made at no 

 fewer than eight meetings in that year cover three 

 pages. We feel that the intercalation of these 

 statements and discussions lathe account of the 

 more formal business would have gone far to 

 relieve the narrative of the history of the club in 

 section i., which, save for the editor's luminous 

 little biographies, is confessedly of only limited 

 interest. 



Section ii. forms a truly remarkable record of 

 the after-dinner talk of a body of the foremost 

 men of science of our time. The topics mentioned 

 or discussed range over the whole realm of 

 Nature, from the centre of the earth to the furthest 

 nebula. We are let, as it were, into the private 

 study or the laboratory of the scientific worker ; 

 we are permitted to hear the earliest outlines of 

 a discovery from the lips of the man \vho made 

 it ; we seem to be in the highest or inner council 

 of science, listening to the words of its most 

 trusted leaders. The entries are sometimes pro- 

 vokingly brief, yet so interesting that had one 

 been there the temptation would have been great 

 to ask the speaker to go on, or to request the 

 treasurer to report the communication in full. The 

 whole collection of communications is an amazing 

 olla podrida, to be read only in little snatches at 

 a time, and bearing somewhat the same relation 

 to the speakers and their audience that the crushed 

 and faded flowers of a herbarium do to their 

 beauty as they lived. The perusal of it, however, 

 cannot but impress on the reader a profound 

 respect for the Philosophical Club and a convic- 

 tion that this club must have been an institution 

 of great scientific driving power and that when it 

 was amalgamated with the Royal Society Club 

 it introduced fresh healthy blood into the older 

 corporation. Its "Annals," therefore, well 

 deserved to be compiled, and the volume in which 

 Prof. Bonney has told the story will take its place 

 among the permanent records of the progress of 

 science in the nineteenth century. 



Arch. Geikie. 



BOTANY OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



The Bota7Ty (^ Crop Plants. A Text and Refer- 

 ence Book. Bv Prof. W. W. Robbins. 

 Pp. xx + 681. (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's 

 Son and Co., 1917.) Price 2 dollars net. 



IN the prefatory vvords of the author, "the issu- 

 ance of this book has been stimulated in part 

 by the expressed need . . . for a text or reference 



