June 29, 1893] 



NA TURE 



197 



stone is "too permanently hard to be a wholesome drink- 

 ing-water," whilst a few lines further on we are surprised 

 to read that " the total solids rarely exceed 20 grains 

 per gallon." The chapter on the atmosphere makes no 

 mentionof the numerous investigations which have been 

 made both at home and abroad on the aerial microbes 

 and their distribution. The authors almost apologise for 

 the prominence they have given to the subject of micro- 

 organisms, but we think they might more appropriately 

 have tendered some excuse for their unfortunate frontis- 

 piece, which endeavours to represent the microscopic 

 appearance of the typhoid and anthrax bacilli ; for what- 

 ever the excellence of the original illustrations may have 

 been, the reproductions in the copy before us do little 

 credit to British printing. 



Practical Astronomy. By P. S. Michie and F. S. Harlow. 

 Second edition. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner 

 and Co., Ltd., 1893.) 



In this book the authors have brought together all those 

 astronomical problems which are required for field work, 

 limiting themselves simply to these, and dealing with 

 them at sufiicitnt length for practical work. The volume 

 is intended especially for the use of cadets of the U.S. 

 Military Academy, and as a supplement to Prof. Young's 

 text-book, and several subjects not sufficiently discussed 

 there for this special branch of practical work are here ex- 

 panded. After a short discussion on the usesofthe^;«^r2'- 

 can Ephemerii and Nautical Almanac, and a few words on 

 interpolation, the authors launch out into the usual 

 methods of determining Time, Latitude, and Longitude 

 on Land, explaining them concisely and deducing the 

 requisite reductions formulas. Corrections for refraction, 

 parallax, &c., also receive a good share in their respective 

 places, while the instrumental errors are fully explained 

 and discussed. Excellent illustrations of instruments 

 (those in use in the Field and Permanent Observatories 

 of the Military Academy during the summer encamp- 

 ment) are inserted and described. In addition to a set 

 of tables collected together at the end, a few well- 

 arranged forms, showing the methods of computing 

 several problems, are inserted, which should prove a great 

 help to those not accustomed to such calculations. 



W. J. L. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



\_The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers oj, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part oJ Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. ] 



The Publication of Physical Papers. 



T HERE is little doubt that there is much to be done towards 

 improving the machinery connected with the publication of 

 paptrs on physical science. liy publication of a paper I do not 

 mean printing and binding and sending it to libraries in incon- 

 venieni place?, which are open at inconvenient hours, but bring- 

 ing it under the eyes of those interested in its subject. It is 

 haidly possible to discuss this matter without being personal 

 lojouinals and societies, so perhaps direct references may be 

 allowed. 



The present position is that as societies we have the Royal 

 Society, which nominally embraces all branches of science, and 

 the I'hysical Society, which is alone devoted entirely to physics, 

 and several important general scientific societies scattered about 

 the present kingdom. We have also some journals. Of these 

 Nature must here be put first, but Nature is by no means purely 

 physical, and is a scientific newspaper, and not a collection of 

 scientific papers, and, owing to the nature of the case, incomplete 

 as regards abstracts. The Philosophical Magazine, with its 

 splendid record, fills its place alone. It contains a certain propor- 



NO. 1235, VOL. 48] 



tion of original papers, and a number of others communicated by 

 the Physical Society, with which there is evidently an arrange- 

 ment. Thereare also purely electrical paper like the Electrician, 

 which covers most V)ranches of electrical work, and the Electrical 

 Reviciv, which publishes filtrates of papers on electrolysis and 

 kindred subjects editorially, with the names and references left 

 out ; an annoying proceeding. Coming to the societies, the 

 Physical Society is alone devoted to physics-. The Royal Physical 

 Society in Edinburgh need not be considered, as it indulges in 

 ornithology and things of that sort. The Physical Society 

 publishes well. Abstracts of the papers and discussions appear in 

 Nature and in most scientific or technical, and in some literary 

 journals. The papers are often published in the Philosophical 

 Magazine, and again in the Society's own Proceedings. 

 No doubt in time this society will be to physics as the 

 I Chemical is to theoretical chemistry, but at present it does not 

 command by any means all the most important physical papers. 

 There is also some waste in republishing in the Philosophical 

 Magazine and the Proceedings, though this does not cost much. 

 The arrangement with the Philosophical Magazine prevents the 

 immediate publication of a Physical Society paper in the 

 scientific and technical journals at home and abroad. This is a 

 source of weakness. A society which objects to its papers being 

 published everywhere before appearing in its own journal does 

 much to defeat its own ends. The Physical may be unable to 

 help this, but in the Royal, or other wealthy institution, it is de- 

 feating the main object of the society's existence for the sake of 

 selling a few odd copies of the Proceedings. To go back to the 

 Physical, the result is that its papers are never reprinted either 

 from the Philosophical Magazine or from the Proceedings. The 

 Philosophical Magazine is not very cheap, and the Proceedings 

 are, I think, not sold to non-members. 



The Royal Society gets physical papers. I believe they are 



sometimes read, but do not know, not being a Fellow. The 



! best papers are published a long time afterward.s in a form 



' which is very expensive to buy, and those who are not Fellows 



generally know nothing about them until they find them by 



chance. Royal Society papers, again, are seldom reprinted in 



the journals. 



i Then there are various other societies, like the Royal Society 



of Edinburgh, and the Cambridge and Dublin societies, which 



shroud valuable papers of all sorts in their transactions, and 



bury them in public libraries. The result of the present state 



of things is that an English physicist — it is difficult to get on 



without this curious woid— has no simple means of following 



the progress of his own special study. 



There are several courses which would improve matters, but 

 none of these is peifect. The most obvious is for all physical 

 papers of any importance to be sent to the Physical Society, 

 and published in its Proceedings. The advantages of this need 

 hardly be enumerated. Of course the Physical Society would 

 develop, and would at once become one of the most important 

 in the world. The drawback is that if this principle were 

 carried out in all branches of science we should have a number 

 of special societies in London, and none anywhere else, which 

 would be a very bad arrangement. Another plan would be for 

 the various societies to join, so that one journal, say that of the 

 Physical Society, contained all the important physical papers 

 ' read at the various societies. A society would communicate its 

 I best papers to the Physical Society's Proceedings, these Pio- 

 j ceedings being controlled partly by representatives of all the 

 other societies. The papers would, of course, also appear in 

 the Proceedings of the societies to which they really belonged. 

 One drawback to this would be that the Royal Society might 

 object to communicating its papers to the Physical ; and this 

 might lead to competition between a special and a more power- 

 ful general society. 



Another course would be for the Royal Society to act as the 

 central body. This would be rather hard on the Physical, and 

 would tend to reduce its standing, so that we would have no 

 first-rate society devoted specially to physics in a country where 

 an enormous amount of work is done in a disorganised way. 

 There would be another difficulty. The Royal Society standard 

 of papers is supposed to be very high, and though it occasionally 

 publishes papers of no value, the high standard generally 

 maintained would exclude many papers of great importance 

 which were hardly good enough for the Royal Society. Then 

 the Royal Society is specially devoted to pure — that is unapplied 

 science, and there are very many papers on applied physics 

 which are of the highest importance. 



