282 



DISCOVERY 



discovery. By 1874 Pcrkin had acquired what, to his 

 simple requirements, seemed sufficient wealth to enable 

 him to retire, at the early age of thirty-six, from his 

 industrial undertakings. The factory was sold, and he 

 set to work to devote his remaining years to the pursu- 

 ance of his life's desire. Research. 



This loss to industry was a gain to science, and there 

 is little doubt that it contributed greatly to the sub- 

 sequent transference of the dyeing industry from this 

 country to Germany. In 188 1 he opened that chapter 

 of physical chemistry which is inseparable from his 

 name by the discovery of the Magnetic Rotatory Power 

 possessed by some of the compounds he had made. 



The celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the 

 discovery of Mauve in 1906, when the chemists from all 

 over the world met together to offer homage to the 

 founder of the coal-tar industry, must have been rather 

 a trying ordeal to a man of so simple and retiring a 

 nature as Perkin. After this he went on a tour to 

 America, and on his return was just settling down to 

 resume the peaceful course of his studies when an 

 iUness put an end to his career. He died while still at 

 his life's work — Research. 



Edward Cahen. 



Note. — The reader is referred to the obituary of Sir William 

 H. Perkin, by the late Professor Meldola, in the Journal of the 

 Chemical Society, 1908, vol. ii, pp. 2214-57. and also to the 

 Hofmann Memorial Lecture by Perkin himself, in the same 

 journal, 1896. 



Reviews of Books 



Conifers and Their Characteristics. By Charles 

 CoLTMAN-RoGERS. (John Murray, 21s. net.) 



The author of tliis book is the chairman of the Forestry 

 Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. 

 He has a wide experience of trees and a good knowledge 

 of what he is writing about. One gathers, from a reading 

 of the book, that the author is sagacious, far-seeing, and 

 full of humour. He would be a good man with whom to 

 go on a country walk ; a good talker too, we should think. 

 But he writes badly. Indeed, he has such a peculiar way 

 of saying what he has to say that we are afraid a great 

 many readers will not be bothered reading him. Tliis is 

 a pity, but so it is. 



The object of the book is to help students and others in 

 identifying the many diflcrent species of trees included in 

 the category of the natural order of Conifera. Cypresses, 

 junipers, cedars, pines, yews, larches, the silver firs and 

 the hemlock and spruce trees, and others, are all described 

 in detail. The descriptions are on the technical rather 

 than on the popular side. At the end of the book a sum- 



mary of information is given in tabular form, following 

 which there is a glossary of the technical terms used. 

 This is the strongest part of the book, because it is definite, 

 concise, and in a form that is easily consulted. 



One feels about this book that it would be all right if 

 only the author would " cut the cackle and get to th« 

 'osses." He adopts at times an anecdotal, chatty manner, 

 digressing apparently merely to be breezy or to make 

 (quite good) jokes. At times he seems to write in inverted 

 commas. One hardly knows whether the journalese he 

 uses is deUberate or not. Imagine George Augustus Sala 

 trying his hand at a style a cross between that of Henry 

 James and the English schoolboy's crib of Vergil, and 

 you have something similar to that frequently adopted in 

 this book. Listen to this in a book about trees. It Is 

 taken from the beginning of the chapter on Hemlock 

 Spruce Firs. It is tj'pical. 



" We who perforce in early days of Ufe sallied or were 

 sent forth from home in quest of knowledge, to drink at 

 the Pierian springs of Greek History within the classical 

 courts of our public schools, may be prone to jump wrongly 

 to a conclusion that the Hemlock tree had some connec- 

 tion with a certain deadly drug, that we were instructed 

 by school-books was meted out to those who were regarded 

 in the hght of a social or poUtical inconvenience by the 

 pro tern. Government of the day which ruled in mighty 

 Athens. . . . Socrates, whose mission it was to lecture — 

 great Socrates, who adored speaking at all times, and who 

 not only adored speaking, but adorned those to whom he 

 spoke with a cloak of infinite wisdom, was enjoined — even 

 if imperatively, let us hope at least in tones of politeness — 

 by the performing clo\vn of the gruesome scene, at th« 

 neurotic moment of his last drink upon earth, to keep 

 silence and hold his tongue, and for no other substantial 

 reason than that it might retard the action of the draught, 

 and thereby involve the executioner in an uncalled-for 

 expenditure in the purchase of more poison drug from the 

 innermost recesses of his private purse ! " 



\Vhen discussing the longest-Uved trees, he expresses 

 himself as follows : 



" The Bo tree {Ficus religiosa), sacred to Buddha, 

 Prince of Sibbartha in Ceylon, claims an existence of 

 2,000 years, but, as it is no native, nor even naturalised, 

 subject of Great Britain, it must be at once non-suited 

 here, and any pros and cons, in the nature of evidenca 

 adduced, declined politely but firmly with thanks." 



At other times the author_beats about the bush for quite 

 a time before making a plain statement of fact. This pre- 

 liminary rigmarole may be quite justifiable in political 

 speeches and in the better-class newspaper advertisement, 

 but it is quite out | of place in a scientific book. Th« 

 author, for example, wishes to say that the common silver 

 fir is one of the finest of conifers. Instead of saying so in 

 plain English, or rather prior to saying so in plain English, 

 he proceeds in this way : 



" ' Vou may tire of mountains and rivors, you may tire of the »ea, 

 but you can never tire of trees.' — Lord Beaconsfield. 



" So spoke the departed statesman (more familiarly 

 knoNvn as ' Dizzy ') of the Victorian Era. 



