June, 1904 ] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



133 



The labours of the plenary Assembly were lif^htened 

 during the period of meeting by a series of hospitalities 

 planned by the Royal Society, the Lord Mayor, the 

 University of London, and a number of representative 

 men of science ; those carried out by the last-named 

 being of a particularly cordial and pleasant nature. In 

 addition, the I'niversities of Oxford and Cambridge 

 arranged visits, and the conferment of degrees upon cer- 

 tain of the foreign delegates took place. 



REVIEWS OF BOOKS. 



Aeronautics. — " My Airships," by A. Santos Dnnioiil (Grant 

 Richards ; 0/- net), is not a student's book. It is a popular work, 

 and it does not, even when judj;od by this modest standartl, artord 

 very much more information than the diiiijent newspaper reader 

 might have gleaned from thi: files of tlu; daily papers. It is 

 prolific in anecdotes of M.Santos Dumont's adolesccnce.and it 

 is charmingly illustrated by photographs of all his tlying 

 machines and most of his accidents. These photographs arc 

 indeed the most valuable feature of the volume, and furnish 

 an idea of tlie evolution of the navigable form of airship, 

 or balloon. M. Santos Dumont does not furnish any positive 

 data as to the exact speeds at which he has been al>le 

 to drive his sliips; but he assumes tliat they travelled at a 

 higher rate than that which Sir Hiram Maxim, for ex.imple, 

 thinks that an airship of the balloon type can be driven. 

 " When, therefore, I state that, according to my best judgment, 

 the average of my speed through the air in those llighls (llights 

 with No. 6 in uj02| was between 30 and 35 kilometres (18 and 

 22 miles) per hour, it will be imderstood that it refers to speed 

 through the air whether the air be still or moving, and to speed 

 retarded by the dragging of the guide rope. Putting this ad- 

 verse influence at the moderate figure of 7 kilometres (4;' miles) 

 per hour, my speed through the still or moving air would be 

 between 37 and 42 kilometres (22 and 27 miles an hour)." If 

 this can be taken .as trustworthy then tliere seems to be 

 not the slightest reason why M. Santos Duniont should not 

 " lift " the Grand Prize of S 100,000 which the St. Louis Exposi- 

 tion is offering for the best average times made over a fifteen- 

 miles triangular course, provided that the average speed is 

 not less than i8| miles an hour. Two points are specially to 

 be noted about M. Santos Dumont's method and the possibilities 

 he claims for it. One is that he is never foolhardy, and keeps as 

 close to the ground as he can, since nothing is to be gained by 

 height. The other is Ih.at he maintains that the chief difficulty 

 in driving against the wind is not the " push " against the front 

 of the balloon ship, but the suction or pull at its stern. The 

 defect of the compilation is chiefly one of omission. One 

 might well imagine after reading "My Airships" that M. 

 Santos Dumont alone had done anything worth recording 

 in the sphere of balloon propulsion, A few allusions are made 

 to M. Giftard's unproductive experiments of fifty years ago, 

 but the verj' successful achievements of MM. Reuardand Krebs, 

 who practically accomplished almcst as much as M. Santos 

 Dumont has done, are merely referred to as " the trials of 

 such balloons . . in 1883 had been repeated by two con- 

 structors in the following year, but had been finally given up in 

 1885," And yet he says: " Before my experiments succeeded, 

 were they not called impossible ? " Moreover, no allusions 

 whatever seem to be made to the Lebaudy balloon, which, 

 according to all accounts, has surpassed the author's machines 

 in speed, in distance travelled, and in the number of successful 

 return trips. 



Geology. — Messrs. Blackie and Son have published a fifth 

 edition, revised, of Mr. Jerome Harrison's "Text-Book ot 

 Geology." It is an admirably compact text-book in its present 

 form ; the new photographs arc as welcome as they were 

 necessary ; and the addition of a table showing the range in 

 time of invertebrate fossils is extremely and distinctively 

 useful. 



Builders' Quantities — Mr. H. C. Grubb has written " Builders' 

 Quantities" (Methuen and Co.) with the intention of giving 

 sufficient and necessary information to technological students 

 for the City aud Guilds examination on the subject, and to 



candidates for the Board of Education examination on Build- 

 ing Construction. The book is eurincutly practical, and is not 

 without acute interest for those whose dealings with builders 

 consist solely in paying their bills. 



Radium. " Radimu, and .Ml .M>i>ut It " (Whittakcr aud Co.), 

 by S. R. Boltone, is a cheap handbook which does not justify 

 its subsidiary title. It is, none the less, a h.indy suunnary of 

 the more popularly interesting facts about radium, and it adds 

 a rather hasty suunnary of some of the theorii-s concerning 

 radium activities, ending with the doubts cast by Sir W, 

 liuggins' examination of the spectrum of radium on its final 

 degradation into helium. 



Entropy. Mr. James Swinburne repeats in "luitropy" 

 (('unstable) those views on thermodynamics which he has 

 been repeating with consider.ible satislaetiou (o himself both 

 before and since he read his disturbing paper on the " Re- 

 versibilily of Thi'rmodynamics " to the Physical Section of the 

 British .Association last year. Since its publication it has 

 been denounced by tlie chief opponent of Mr. Swinburne's 

 views as liki-ly to be extremely disturbing to earnest engineer- 

 ing students ; but it has at any rate been productive of some 

 interesting and spirited rejoinders from Professor Perry. As 

 .in example of Mr. Swinburne's lively style, we may quote the 

 following passage : "The unit of heat, which is quite an uu- 

 necess.ary nuisance, has no name, for British thermal unit is 

 not a name; it is an opprobrious epithet." 



"Metal Working," by J. C. Pearson (Jolni Murray; 2s.), is an 

 admirable guide to the practical manipulation of tools for the 

 working of metals. Tlie sulijects treated of are divided under 

 the various headings, such as " l'"iling," " Scraping," " Solder- 

 ing," " Riveting," iS:c., and each operation is not only clearly 

 described, but good outline figures and numerous jihotogr.iphs 

 add greatly to the value of the deseriptioiis, so that any one 

 mastering this little work may consider himself a fairly expert 

 metal worker. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



I Flowering I'lants and Perns. A second edition of the " Manual 

 and Diction.iry of the Moweriiig Plants and Eerns " (("am- 

 bridge University Press ; 10s. Od.), wliieh Mr. J. C. Willis origin- 

 ally wrote in two volumes, has now been pulilished in a single 

 volume to its great advantage in accessibility of information 

 .and general usefulness. Mr. Willis's work, modest in aim, 

 and described by its author as a mere coir.pilation, is of en- 

 cyclopjedic value to the student of botany. As in the first 

 edition, its staple contents are a dictionary in which the whole 

 of the families and the important genera of flowering plants 

 are dealt with ; and this general information is supplemented 

 by special treatment in Part I. of the morphology, natural 

 history classification, geographical disposition, and economic 

 uses of the flowering plants and ferns. To the new edition 

 has been added a mass of additional material; and new 

 features are the articles on outfit, on collecting and preserving 

 material, on observing and recording, and on general field 

 work — a method of botanising which receives too little .itteii- 

 tion. We cannot pay the wi)rk a higher compliment than that 

 of saying that Mr. Willis's expressed aim " to render the work 

 sufficiently complete forthe requirementsof botanical students, 

 schoolmasters, travellers, residents in outlying districts, and 

 the considerable class of ])eople who have an indirect interest 

 in botany, and need some general work of reference on that 

 subject . . ." has been completely and triumphantly at- 

 tained. At the same time the student at home will l)e able to 

 make constant use of it as a treatise of reference in general 

 morphology and geology on plant distribution and systematic 

 botany. 



War in tiie Far East, - W'e have received from Messrs, Virtue 

 and Co. for review the first volume of a history of the Russo- 

 Japanese War, "War in the P"ar East," by E. Sliarpe (Irew. 

 Vol. 1, which is attractively bound and illustrated, deals with 

 the preliminary history which led to the outbreak of war. The 

 evolution of Modern Japan is traced ; the relations of Japan 

 with Korea and China are described, .and an account is given 

 of the Chino-Japanese War. It is shown how the interven- 

 tion of luiropean Powers in the settlement of Peace negotia- 

 tions and the sub.sequent Russian encroachments led inevitably 

 to the present crisis in the P'ar East. 



