Nov. 28, 1834.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



449 



established. It will be gathered fiom this precis that Mr. 

 Muir does not address the mere beginner. To the f-tudent, 

 however, already possessing a certain amount of familiarity 

 with chemical facts, his book will be found invaluable. As 

 we close the volume, the words of the writer of Ecclesiastes, 

 "There is no new thing under the sun," recurs to us, aud 

 we are struck by the strangeness of the reflection, that we 

 have been perusing a masterly exposition and defence of 

 that doctrine of atoms which, first formally enunciated by 

 Democritus 2,300 years ago, sank for more than two 

 chiliads into oblivion. 



A mong the Stars. By Agnes Giberxe. (London : 

 Seeley k Co. 1S85.) — Why Miss Giberne should imagine 

 that any sane English gentleman would christen his son 

 " Ikon " is not very apparent, but when we ignore, or get 

 accustomed to, the little bit of affectation which this in- 

 dicates, we find that she really does contrive to convey a 

 considerable amount of elementary astronomical knowledge 

 in the volume before us. What " Ikon " learned from 

 Herr Lehrer, Fraulein Stella, and Mr. Fritz, the young 

 reader must go to the book himself to discover. We may 

 pretty safely predict that, if it does not find him with a 

 taste for astronomy, it will leave him with one. The title- 

 page bears the date 1685; we trust, however, that so very 

 appropriate a Christmas present for good little children, for 

 whom it is proposed to provide a high and ennoblmg recrea- 

 tion, will be issued in time to be put to so legitimate a 

 use. 



Healthy Manvfacliire of Bread. By Benjamin Wakd 

 Richardson, M.D. (London : Bailliere, Tindall, <t Cox. 

 1884.) — From time to time readers of the newspapers are 

 startled with revelations as to the condition of many of the 

 bakehouses in the metropolis and in other large cities and 

 towns, and learn, with disgust and dismay, that they are liable 

 to eat bread contaminated with alum, human perspiration 

 and exhalations, sewer gas, cockroaches, and other abomina- 

 tions incidental to its manufacture in closely-contined and 

 heated cellars. In the ordinary process of bread-makinrj 

 flour, potatoes, and yeast are mixed to form a " ferment," 

 to which, at the end of six hours or so, a quarter of the 

 flour ultimately to be used is added, and this (now called 

 the " sponge ") is set further to rise. When it is ready, the 

 remaining three-quarters of the Hour are added, and the 

 ■whole kneaded into dough. This is cut into pieces of 

 proper size, put into the oven, and baked. Such, in the 

 briefest terms, is the process of bread-making carried on 

 sometimes, but happily more rarely than formerly, in over- 

 heated and ill-ventilated cellars, with occasional sewers 

 running beside or even through them. In these stifling 

 dungeons the pert-piring workmen knead the dough with 

 their hands or feet, and sleep in their clothes upon the 

 " boards " on which the dough is weighed out. Now, 

 the sole object of the fermenting process is to gene- 

 rate carbonic acid gas (the gas which makes soda- 

 water, champagne, and bottled ale sparkle) — the object 

 is, we say, to cause this gas to permeate the bread 

 in bubbles, and so make it light and spongy. 

 In Dr. Richardsc us book he shows how this may be done 

 by forcing the gas itself directly into the mixture of flour 

 and water, as efl'ected under Dr. Dauglish's patent : Dr. 

 Dauglish's process not only involving this manifest improve- 

 ment, but actually producing the loaf from the flour in the 

 sack without its being touched by human hands, until it 

 issues baked from the oven and ready for consumption. 

 This is the well-known and popular aerated bread, and it is 

 to an explanation of its mode of manufacture, and the 

 advantages accruing from its use, that our author addresses 

 himself. Every one who is concerned in procuring abso- 

 lutely pure :^rfl wholtsome I uari — Hnd who is not ? — should 



read through the work whose title heads this notice from 

 cover to cover. 



77(6 Principles of Parliamentary Eepreb-entution. By 

 Cdas. L. Dodgson, ma (London : Harrison &, Sons. 

 1884.) — Now that a redistribution of seats in Parliament 

 appears imminent, it behoves every one who has the welfare 

 of his country at heart to endeavour to ensure that such 

 distribution shall have the tflFect of aflfording the greatest 

 chance possible to each individual elector of being repre- 

 sented in the House. That every elector should be so 

 represented is, of course, impossible ; but the tendency of 

 legislation should be in the direction indicated. As a con- 

 tribution towards the attainment of this desideratum we 

 must afibrd unstinted ])raise to Mr. Dodgson's tract, which 

 lays down, on mathematical principles, the numbers of 

 voters to be assigned to each electoral district, and the 

 number of members to be returned. He treats also of 

 the mode of counting the votes, and gof s into other prac- 

 tical details, which cannot fail to be of the highest value 

 to all who approach the consideration of the subject 

 from a scientific — as contradistinguished from the merely 

 party — point of view. The party politician may look 

 askance at equations as applied to the question of repre- 

 sentation, but the wise man will read, mark, learn, and 

 inwardly digest this little book, with the result of find- 

 ing that its conclusions are at once sound and valuable. 



Ethnology of Egyptian Sudan. By Prof. A. H. Keane, 

 B.A. (London: Edward Stanford. 18S4.)— With the 

 fate of that gallant heio, Gordon, trembling in the balance, 

 to say nothing of complications in connection with the 

 country itself, whereof no man may see the end, every- 

 thing concerning the Sudan at present is a matter of great 

 popular interest. In the woik before us that well-known 

 anthropologist and philologist, Prof. Keane, gives a 

 descriptive account of the various tribes who inhabit the 

 Sudan, furnishing details of what is known as to their 

 origin, language, &.c. Readers will be considerably sur- 

 prised to learn what a heterogeneous populatic.n inhabits the 

 area to the elucidation of the ethnology of which Mr. 

 Keane's pamphlet is devoted. 



Flatland : a Romance of many Dimensions. By A. 

 Square. (London : Seeley k Co. 1884 ) — The Jew d'esprit 

 whose title heads this notice is obviously the producti"n of 

 a follower of Lobatschewsky and Biemann — his end seem- 

 ingly being to familiarise his readers with the idea that it 

 may, after all, be only the shape of the space accessible to 

 our observation which binds us down rigidly to the concep- 

 tion of its possession of three dimensions, and three only. 

 The writer, whose universe is a plane, finds it utterly 

 impossible to imagine the existence of thickness prior to 

 his visit to this part of the cosmos, length and breadth being 

 the only ones recognisable. He gets a certain amount of 

 fun out of his description of " Flatland," in which the 

 lower classes (and soldiers) are isosceles triangles, the 

 middle classes squares, the upper middle with a tendency 

 to a pentasonal, or even hexagonal, forms, and the aris- 

 tocracy circles — the female sex in all classes being practi- 

 cally only straight lines. Nor does terrestrial sociology 

 escape numerous sly pokes in the descriptions of political 

 and domestic life in "Flatland." This daintily got-up 

 work will afford any one (and, notably, the mathematician) 

 half-an-hour's amusing reading. 



Eon: to Live on a Shilling a ^eek. By One who has 

 Tried it. (London : T. i R. Maxwell, 1884 )— That men 

 leading sedentary lives would enjoy better health if a larger 

 proportim of their food were vegetable may readily be con- 

 ceded. To insist, however, that every human being shall 

 foithwith take to grazing, like a sheep (or Nebuchadnezzar), 

 is ihe verv redicctio ad ahs'irdnm, and is simply calculated 



