September 1, 1887.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



261 



as a work of reference. Practically everything that he has 

 met vrith in his reading he will here tind succinctly ex- 

 plained and illustrated by an approprLite demonstration. 

 It contains the essence of a very large number of works 

 indeed, and to all who have previously studied any of the 

 very various subjects with which it deals, it will almost 

 stand in the place of an extensive collection of books. The 

 figures are models of clearness, and the index Ls exhaustive. 

 It is, in fine, emphatically a work without which no mathe- 

 matical library can be complete. 



Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. 

 May 18S7. (London: Triibner & Co.)— In the year 1884 

 an attempt was made to get this magazine to advertise a 

 person named Eglinton, a slate-writer ; first by sending a 

 book to us for review, and then by a frantic eflbrt of a cer- 

 tain " spiritualistic " journal to provoke us into a discussion. 

 Both, of course, failed, and Eglinton had to announce his 

 tricks through some other medium. One of the most 

 interesting things — among many — in the May part of the 

 Proceedinys of the Society for Psychical Research is a 

 description of certain experiments, and a discussion of their 

 results, which throw the strongest possible light on the way 

 in which this Eglinton deludes the fatuous creatures who 

 resort to him :is a means of communication with the other 

 world. We would urge every one interested in this form of 

 imposture to obtain the number of the Society's Proceed- 

 ings now before us straightway, and to read the papere by 

 Professor Carvill Lewis and Jlessi-s. Hodgson and Davey 

 with all the care and attention he can bestow upon them. 

 They will be found amply to repay the trouble. Xor, as we 

 have previously intimated, will the remainder of the number 

 be found destitute of interest, containing, as it does, the 

 presidential address of Professor Kalfour Stewart and 

 several essays by Messrs. Myers and Gurney. The weakest 

 part of the " psychical " case, as expounded in the volume 

 on our table, is, as it seems to us, that founded on the 

 observation of so-called hypnotic phenomena ; as, within 

 our own experience, there is no class of performance which 

 so readily lends itself to impostures as this does, or in which 

 such imposture is so difficult to detect. 



Geology of yorthumberland and Durliam. By G. A. 

 Lebour, M.A., F.G.S. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne : Lambert &. 

 Co. 1886.) — Originally prepared as a text-book for 

 Professor Lebour's Class of Geological Surveying, his work 

 has expanded in this, its second, edition into a compendium 

 of the geology of our two northernmost English counties. 

 Himself apparently more espedally a physical geologist. 

 Mr. Lebour furnishes a quantity of information with 

 reference to the pateontogi-aphical character of the strata 

 which he describes, in the shape of numerous pi'ettj' 

 complete tables of the fossils found in them. Five plates 

 and seventeen woodcuts in the text sufficienth' illustrate 

 a volume which will certainly be found valuable by all 

 scientific visitors to Northumberland and Durham, and by 

 others who may wish to learn all that is known as to the 

 geological structure of those counties. 



On Forecasting the Weather. By B. G. Jenkins. (F. 

 Hayez, Brussels. 1887.) — L'nless our memory is more 

 treacherous than usual, the last time we met Mr. Jenkins 

 in print was on the annoimcement cf his having found a 

 celestial mare's-nest in connection with a luminous spot on 

 the planet Mercury in transit. His latest discovery in 

 equine nidification takes the form of a revelation that the 

 weather has a sixty-two year period, and that this is strictly 

 referable to a lunar cycle of identical duration, at the end 

 of which he asserts the moon is in apogee, and perigee in 

 new and full, ifcc, at the same dates that she was sixty-two 

 years ago. Now, imprimis, this is simply untrue ; albeit 



what is asserted really happens at the end of fifty-four years 

 2)lus thirty-two or thirty-three da)'s. Proceeding, however, 

 we find the discrepancies between Mr. Jenkins's years of 

 comparison disposed of on the assumption of " inequ.alities 

 in the moon's daily motion " ! ! I Furthermore, Mr. Jenkins's 

 months are calculable from a certain time after apogee to a 

 certain time after the succeeding apogee ; while the greatest 

 amount of rain falls, as he asserts, about three months after 

 the nearest approach of the moon to the Earth ! We learn 

 with unbounded surprise that all this stuff has been printed 

 at the cost of the Eoyal Academy of Belgium, "after being 

 examined by an astronomical commission." We are most 

 curious to know the names of the astronomers (?) who 

 sanctioned such publication. 



Transit Tables for 1887. By L.itimer Clark, F.R.A.S., 

 M.I.C.E. (London and New York : E. i F. N. Spon. 

 1887.) — Once more we greet with sincere gratification the 

 appearance of Mr. Latimer Clark's excellent and most useful 

 little volume of tables, indicating as its annual appearance 

 does the existence of an extensive public interest in the 

 question of obtaining rigidly accurate time, independently 

 of local clocks and other imperfect methods of ascertaining 

 it. Furnished with one of the cheap and efficient transit 

 instruments of Mr. Clark's invention, and the volume before 

 us, anyone and everyone, be his position the most isolated 

 pos.sible, may determine his time within a fraction of a 

 second — a boon only to be realised by those who have once 

 enjoyed it. How it is to be obtained may lie learned from 

 Mr. Clark's full and instructive preface. 



Alpine Winter in its Medical Aspects. By A. Tucker 

 Wise, M.D., L.R.C.P., etc. (London : J. i "A. Churchill. 

 188tj.) — The favourable notice of the first edition of Dr. 

 Tucker Wise's book, which we felt it our duty to give on 

 p. 346 of our Sixth Volume, is justified by the appearance 

 already of its third. It certainly deserves the careful study 

 of all afflicted with lung disease. 



Household Health. By B. AV. Richardson, M.D. 

 (London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 

 1886.) — A book to be commended to every occupier of .a 

 house, be his social i-ank what it maj-. The extraordinarily 

 low price at which Dr. Richardson's work is published 

 renders it eminently suitable for distribution among a class 

 whose neglect of household hygiene is a chronic source of 

 danger in large towns and cities. 



THE FACE OF THE SKY FOR SEPTEMBER. 



POT.S in varjins; numbers, though rarel}- of any 

 cinsiderable size, continue to appear from time to 

 time on the suns disc. Towards the end o£ 

 September the zodiacal light may be seen in the 

 east before sunrise. The aspect of the night sky 

 is shown on Map IX. of " The Stars in tlieir 

 Seisons." Mercury is a morning star at the be- 

 ginning of the month, but passes behind the sun 

 on the 10th, and subse^iuently becomes an evening 

 star. He is very inditferently placed for the observer throughout 

 September. Venus begins September as an evening star, but comes 

 into inferior conjunction with the sun on the 21st. At and about 

 this date she is a glorious object in the telescope, and particular 

 attention should be paid by the observer to the visibility, or non- 

 visibiUty of her dark limb. The night sky, in so far as the planets 

 are concerned, is an absolute blank, the whole of those exterior to 

 the earth being, for the observer's purpose, invisible. The moon is 

 full at llh. 12-7m. A.M. on the 2nd, enters her last quarter at 

 3h. 3-2m. in the afternoon of the 10th, is new at Ih. 59-8m. r.M. on 

 the 17th, and enters her first quarter at oh. 3 !)m. in the early morn- 

 ing of the 24th. The moon will occult six fixed stars during the 

 present month. The first is the 6th magnitude one, 29 Sagittarii, 

 which will disappear at the moon's dark limb on the 2+th, at 

 lOh. ISm. P.M., at an angle of 180° from her vertex. She will have 

 set ere it reappears at her bright limb. On the 25th Sagittarii, a 



