January, 1915. 



KNOWLEDGE. 



31 



than in the case of the companion book recently noticed 

 in these columns, and it may be recommended to all who 

 are beginning the study of the science. The subjects include 

 the metric system, laws of gases, determination of chemical 

 formulae, chemical equations, and examples of gravimetric 

 and volumetric analysis, and at the end there is a helpful 

 series of graduated problems and a table of logarithms. 



C. A. M. 



PAINTING IN NORTH ITALY. 



Tlie Painters of Italy : A History of Painting in Italy, 



Umbria, Florence, and Siena. — Vols. V and VI. By Crowe 



and Cavalcaselle. Vol. V, 528 pages. Vol. VI. 



220 pages. Numerous illustrations. 9-in.x6-in. 



(John Murray. Price 21 /- each volume.) 



WTiile north, east, and west the hideous tumult of carnage 

 is convulsing Europe, Italy lies serene and smiling among her 

 olives, from the rocky, barren coasts of Calabria to the rich 

 and busy haven of Genoa, immortal shrine of an art that 

 shall soothe and illumine and ennoble the souls of men when 

 the t^ventieth-century Herod has passed away like the smoke 

 of his cannons. For the painters of no other country have 

 known so to spiritualise the flesh as the painters of Italy ; 

 nowhere has the cult of the Madonna and Child been so per- 

 fected in art. Above countless altars, darkened by the smoke 

 of centuries of worship, the Mother of God, patient and 

 benign, with the Sa\^our upon her knee, smiles down upon 

 her \-otanes the eternal promise of peace and forgi\-eness, 

 while her courtly circle of adoring saints and ascetics bring 

 home as nowhere else the message that " God was made 

 man, and dwelt among us." Thus at this time there is 

 a curious appropriateness in the appearance of the last two 

 volumes of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's " History of Painting 

 in Italy," completing the new- authorised edition, 

 for which we have waited so many years ; for the 

 minds of all of us turn with relief from a chaotic 

 world to those calm, lofty, and immutable ideals 

 which the Italian painters realised. These two concluding 

 volumes deal with those ideals in some of their most ex- 

 quisite manifestations, for they treat of the delicate and 

 elusive charm of the painters of Siena and the robuster 

 school of Umbria. Merely to turn the pages of these beauti- 

 ful volumes and study the illustrations is an education in 

 itself. The editors, Mr. Langton Douglas and Mr. Tancred 

 Borenius, have admirably preserved the homogeneous cha- 

 racter of the work as a whole. The writers' text stands 

 untouched, careful footnotes drawing attention to the 

 minor points on which modern criticism, in the light of 

 more recent discoveries, is not wholly at one with their 

 conclusions. For the work of Crowe and Cavalcaselle 

 stands for all time supreme of its kind in comprehensiveness, 

 discernment, and appreciation. The last two volumes 

 co\-er that glorious period beginning with the name of 

 Piero della Francesca, Perugino, Pinturicchio, and con- 

 cluding with that of Andrea del Sarto. In one of those 

 illuminating and suggestive summaries which occur from 

 time to time in their work the authors comment on the 

 perfecting influence of Florence on the great artists of her 

 day : " Its ultimate perfection was due to the wisdom with 

 which all existing elements of progress were assimilated 

 and combined. The great laws of composition founded on 

 the models of Giotto, the plastic element made dominant 

 by the sculptors of the fifteenth century, the scientific 

 perspective of lines which owed its impulse to Uccello, 

 the more subtle one of atmosphere \\hich Masaccio mas- 

 tered, the tasteful architecture revived by Brunelleschi and 

 Alberti were summed up in a great measure by the spirit 

 and grasp of Domenico Ghirlandaio." In such passages 

 as these is kept before the reader's mind the ordered 

 continuity of the development of painting in Italy. It is 

 the realisation of this which helps to give its value to the 

 work as a whole. 



E. S. G. 



TIMBER. 



The Mechanical Properties of Wood. — By Samuel J. 

 Record, M.A., M.F., Assistant Professor of Forest Pro- 

 ducts, Yale ITniversity. 165 pages. 50 illustrations. 

 7-in. X 5-in. 



(New York : John Wiley & Sons. London : Chapman 

 and Hall. Price 7/6 net.) 



Professor Record is already favourably known as a 

 student of timber, and this eminently practical handbook 

 will unquestionably add not a little to his reputation. 

 In spite of the formidable-seeming bibliography that he 

 gives us, occupying fourteen pages, there was a distinct 

 want of a comprehensive and simple manual such as this. 

 The uninitiated would perhaps hardly realise that the 

 mechanical properties of wood can be analysed into no 

 fewer than nine principal and distinct characters, namely, 

 elasticity, tensile strength, compressive strength, shearing 

 strength, bending strength, toughness, hardness, cleavabilit^-, 

 and resilience. Still less does the ordinary carpenter, 

 builder, or other employer of wood for purposes of con- 

 struction realise the complexity of the apparatus necessary 

 to test these qualities. It is only in Government depart- 

 ments, or in the most richly endowed engineering institutes, 

 that we can expect such machinery to find a place ; so that 

 it is not surprising that Professor Record's book, although 

 not a Government publication, is largely made up of data 

 obtained by the United States Forest Service at their 

 Laboratory at Madison. Few, if any, Governments are 

 more deeply interested in the commercial value of home- 

 grown timbers than is that of the United States ; and the 

 scientific world is much indebted to that Government for 

 the thoroughness with which it carries out such investiga- 

 tions as these. The chief drawback to them at present is 

 that which has always beset timber-testing, namely, the 

 variety of tests applied by different investigators for the 

 same objects, by which their results are rendered almost 

 incapable of comparison. The common names of American 

 trees are now becoming fairly definite on their side of the 

 Atlantic, or we should have insisted that " beech, sugar 

 maple, post oak, longleaf pine," and so on, ought to be 

 supplemented with the scientific names of the species 

 intended. As it is at present barely possible to compare 

 English, Indian, Australian, and Continental tables of 

 tests with those of the United States, is it too much to ask 

 that the well-equipped United States Government should 

 obtain a good series of w-ell-authenticated samples of 

 European, Indian, and Australasian timbers, and submit 

 them to tests identical with those already employed for 

 their native timbers, so that they might happily appear in 

 some future edition of Professor Record's book ? We 

 believe that the result would redound to the commercial 

 profit of America. The Professor has placed his students 

 under an additional obligation by reducing the mechanics 

 involved in his work to the simplest terms, without reference 

 to higher mathematics. The photographs of the testing 

 machines are perhaps not very illuminating, but they are 

 supplemented by an excellent series of diagrams in the 

 text. 



G. S. Boulger. 



ZOOLOGY. 



The Romance of the Beaver. — By A. Radclyffe Dugmore. 

 225 pages. 102 illustrations. 9-in. x5J-in. 



(Wm. Heinemann. Price 6/- net.) 



What he has done for the Newfoundland caribou in an 

 earUer volume Mr. Dugmore has accomplished in the one 

 now before us for the Canadian beaver ; but, as the latter 

 is a distinctly more interesting and more wonderful animal 

 than the former, his new venture should appeal to a still 

 larger circle of readers. That a number of misconceptions 

 and errors regarding the habits of an animal that stands 

 alone in the matter of mechanical ingenuity, and in the 



