250 



DISCOVERY 



origins traced, and its temporal and spatial relations 

 disentangled. 



Dr. Harrison's admirable lit lie handbook to the collec- 

 tions of the Horniman Museum of the London County 

 Council has reached its second edition some seventeen 

 years after its first appearance. [( is more than a mere 

 description of the exhibits, and notwithstanding its 

 modest form, it is a sound introduction to the technology 

 and material culture of prehistoric times. It has been 

 brought fully abreast of the numerous discoveries made 

 since its first appearance. 



E. N. Fall.mze. 



The Constitution of Matter. By M.\x Born. Translated 

 by E. W. Blair and T. S. Wheei.er. (Methuen 

 & Co., 6s.) 



A good book ; a compilation by a distinguished hand, 

 well produced and at a very reasonable price. It con- 

 tains three essays, the first on " The Atom," the second 

 entitled, " From Mechanical Ether to Electrical Matter," 

 and the third, " The Fusion of Chemistry and Physics." 

 These include all the most recent work on the constitution 

 of matter, a subject on which the author is one of the 

 foremost German authorities. The subjects are accu- 

 rately but briefly explained, the illustrations are good, 

 and the principal references to the literature form a long 

 list at the end of each essay. All this is excellent. It 

 is not easy to see, however, for which class of readers 

 the book is produced. It undoubtedly supplies a want, 

 but whose ? The man who will find it most useful is he 

 who has to give a course of lectures on the constitution 

 of matter, for nothing could be more useful as an outline 

 and as an inspiration, than this. But only such a one, 

 one who already knows the subject, will get all the good 

 out of it. Research workers in physical chemistry would 

 do well to have this book upon their shelves, but I fear that 

 the ordinary student will find it too elusive, too con- 

 densed, too specialised. There are the references, to be 

 sure, but to most students references are just references. 

 They have no time to delve ; it is from the book itself 

 that they must get their information. 



The book, I have said, is too condensed, and the conse- 

 quences of this are two. First, important matters that 

 occupied years of research are treated in a few lines, and, 

 second, much that is secondary, but important enough 

 to be mentioned, appears to be of first importance. As 

 examples of the first I may cite the work of Rutherford 

 and of Aston. Aston's work on isotopes gets fourteen 

 lines (but includes a good illustration) ; Rutherford's on 

 the splitting off of hydrogen from nitrogen gets sixteen 

 lines and a picture. The second brings out a point I 

 have noticed in several books lately translated from the 

 German : English and American workers appear to be 

 outstarted by investigators on the Continent. In this 

 book Moseley appears to be merely one who interposed 

 his work between that of the Braggs and Debyes ; 

 G. N. Lewis is hardly mentioned ; Sir E. Rutherford is 

 only one of many. On the other hand, Bohr's work is 

 rightly made very prominent, but I think there is too 



much about Kossel, and few would agree that " probably 

 the best exponent of modern X-ray spectroscopy " is 

 Siebgalin. And cryptic utterances like "[one day] all 

 physics and all chemistr}' will be a branch of the theory 

 of numbers — the theory of the atomic number z" are 

 best omitted. If this be true, it is true only in the most 

 sophisticated of Pickwickian senses, and only the elect 

 understand it. 



But these faults are not very serious and cannot be 

 ascribed to the translators, who have done their work well. 

 On page 34 they have forgotten to translate back the 

 translated title of Rutherford's standard work on Radio- 

 activity. And truer patriots would have put its name 

 before, and not after, that of an Austrian book. For, 

 indeed, if it had not been for the work of this author, 

 first on the disintegration theory and second on the 

 nuclear theory of the atom, there would have been little 

 field for the very clever and distinguished men whose 

 works have made tins book. A. S. Russell. 



Heat and Energy. By D. R. Pye. (Clarendon Press, 

 Oxford, 5s.) 



The Clarendon Science Series, a new venture of the 

 O.xford University Press, starts appropriately with a 

 book on Heat and Energy by a Fellow of Trinity College, 

 Cambridge. The series has been designed as a set of 

 readers to form the background of science teaching during 

 the period of general education which stops for most boys 

 and girls at the age of about sixteen. The books are not 

 supposed to be text-books in the usual sense. It is from 

 the latter that the large quantity of detailed facts, which 

 examiners still insist upon, may be learned. But these 

 books aim at concentrating upon fundamentals, in arous- 

 ing the interests of pupils, in teaching the scientific point 

 of view. A pupil, it is believed, who has become interested 

 in the ideas of science and has been brought to appreciate 

 scientific method is educated in a much more desirable 

 and complete way than the " walking cyclopaedia " who 

 never thinks. 



This book certainly fulfils the editor's hopes. It 

 tries to give a comprehensive conception of Energy as 

 the basis of all activity in Nature, and to make clear 

 the essential unity of the different forms in which we 

 recognise its existence ; to illustrate its convertibility 

 into forms suitable for storage, transference, and use 

 and its final degradation to a state in which, although 

 undiminished in quantity, it is no longer available as a 

 source of activity. It is excellent as regards the general 

 treatment and the information given. It is also written in 

 a pleasant style that carries the reader on. The illustra- 

 tions are well chosen, but not very well produced. Some 

 of them are rather muzzy, a little bleached, like the 

 appearance of a bank-note back from the laundry after 

 having been inadvertently left in a garment. A. S. R. 



Theoretical Chemistry. By Professor W. Nernst. 



Fifth English edition revised from the Eighth-tenth 



German edition by L. W. Codd, M.A. (Macmillan 



& Co., 28s.) 



In a short notice scant justice can be done to a work 



like this one. No short resume can give even the meagerest 



