November 24, 1892] 



NA TURE 



75 



It is instructive to notice that as educational treatises 

 are improved in character and prepared by those quali- 

 fied for the task, the reverent superstition which has 

 for ages surrounded certain errors and fallacies, that 

 have done duty for scientific reasoning, is being remorse- 

 lessly swept away. The so-called proof of the sphericity 

 of the earth, based upon the fact that ships have sailed 

 round it, is not quoted now, even by incompetent teachers, 

 with the same satisfactory conviction that was formerly 

 accorded to it. Mr. Gregory gives a diagram which 

 ought to convince the most antiquated schoolmistress, 

 but such myths die hard. Similarly with our friend 

 " the burning mountain," which has frequently been re- 

 garded as an adequate definition of a volcano — that too 

 is meeting with its deserts ; but this will take a still longer 

 time to kill, let Prof. Judd and others insist as they will. 

 Many instances will occur to every one who has com- 

 pared the carefully compiled text-books of to-day with 

 those that were popular only a few years back, and no 

 fact marks more emphatically the improvement, or the 

 necessity for improvement, in educational treatises. 

 Definitions, to be accurate and adequate, will always be 

 a source of trouble to the writers of elementary books, 

 and the author of the present work has no doubt been 

 exercised to combine the necessary accuracy and sim- 

 plicity. We cannot think that he has always been 

 happy, but where so much is admirable it would be un- 

 grateful to dwell upon small blemishes, and can only be 

 permitted with the view of securing their improvement 

 or removal in a future edition. 



The definition of meridian as given on page 105 and 

 again at page 151 is susceptible of improvement, and it 

 is certainly incorrect to describe a sidereal day as the 

 interval of time that elapses between two successive 

 transits of the same star. Such little slips must be due 

 to the hurry of production, as that on page 382, where 

 we are told to determine the position of the north point 

 by observing the " shadow of the sun." We should have 

 thought the shadow of the object would have been more 

 convenient. And again, on page 407, what is meant by 

 the sun's " regular diameter " ? But such little slips as 

 these do not materially detract from the merit of the 

 book, which we heartily commend to the thoughtful study 

 of those for whom it has been written. 



SCIENCE AND BREWING. 

 A Handy Book for Brewers. By Herbert Edwards 



Wright, M A. (London : Crosby Lockwood and Son, 



1892.) 

 TT'HE author claims that the principal aim of this book 

 is to give the conclusions of modern research in so 

 far as they bear upon the practice of brewing. We 

 gathered a different opinion on first opening the volume, 

 for facing the title-page there stands conspicuously a 

 trade advertisement of a firm manufacturing a patented 

 article used by brewers, stating that this article is 

 " referred to in the work," and " for further particulars see 

 advertisement at end of book." To any one at all 

 familiar with the way in which quasi-scientific articles 

 are so frequently to be met with in the literature of 

 brewing written for the purpose of advertizing their author 

 or some other thing, it would be only natural to conclude 

 NO. T204, VOL. 47] 



that the advertisement quoted was the real clue to the 

 origin of this volume, and wonder at the unusual clumsi- 

 ness with which it was made so evident. However, we 

 afterwards meet with the following statement in the 

 author's preface : " Having found after the sheets had been 

 finally passed to »he printer, that the publishers considered 

 it would be a useful feature in the book to insert a few 

 advertisements of matters interesting to brewers, he 

 wishes it to be clearly understood that he has no personal 

 interest in the matter." A little prejudice perhaps 

 remained in our mind even after reading this disclaimer, 

 but in justice to the author we may say at once that a 

 perusal of the book has removed it. We sympathize 

 with him in having a publisher whose disinterested 

 over-zeal for the convenience of his readers has given 

 his book such an unpleasant first impression. 

 j From a scientific point of view, in one respect the 

 i practice of breA'ing compares with the practice of 

 ' medicine, in that the complexity of vital processes has to 

 I be encountered in both, and through our present im- 

 perfect state of knowledge of these questions, the 

 j practice of both is based very largely on empiricism. 

 I Fortunately for the brewer, the life functions with which 

 ; he has to deal so largely belong to the more simple forms 

 I of life, and the vast strides which have been made the 

 last few years in our knowledge of the microphytes, and 

 the physiological processes of the higher plants, have 

 probably placed him much nearer to a sound scientific 

 basis on which to rest his practice, than is the physician 

 who has to deal with the vital functions of the most 

 highly developed organism. But even yet empiricism 

 rules many details of the brewer's practice, although re- 

 search is gradually throwing true light upon them ; there- 

 fore any writer who, in the present state of things, 

 attempts to bring scientific knowledge and the practice 

 of brewing together, has a very hard task before him in 

 order to clearly make his readers understand the relative 

 position in which the two stand at present. Mr. Wright 

 has with much diligence gathered together the results of 

 a large amount of research work bearing upon the dif- 

 ferent stages of the brewing process, but we do not think 

 that he has been always happy in selecting only the 

 most trustworthy of these, neither are we pleased with 

 the way in which he sets them before his readers to ex- 

 plain, or at any rate throw light upon, the different stages 

 of the manufacturing process. It is a very difficult task, 

 as we have just intimated, and we believe that the author, 

 who is evidently a scientific man as well as a practical 

 brewer, could have improved upon these parts of his 

 work ; at any rate we are quite sure that with due con- 

 sideration he could easily have improved upon the 

 general arrangement of his subjects, which is badly con- 

 sidered, and must be very confusing to a student not well 

 acquainted with his subject. 



We also regret that space is wasted in devoting a 

 chapter to an attempt to teach the science of chemistry 

 to the reader. Some such mistaken attempt is frequently 

 made in technical works treated scientifically, but a 

 greater waste of paper can hardly be imagined. For 

 instance, in the present case we have a chapter starting 

 with a description of the elements and the atomic theory, 

 which positively, in less than thirty-five pages, professes 

 to lead the reader up to the consideration of the con- 



