28 



KNOWLEDGE 



[January 1, 1897. 



Autobiof/raphy of Sir George Biddell Ain/, K.C.B., M.A., 

 LL.D., b.C.L., F.n.S., F.B.A.S. Edited by WUfred 

 Airy, B.A., M. Inst. C.E. (Cambridge University 

 Press.) This is a disappointing book. Tliose who 

 knew Sir George Airy, and were aware of his strongly- 

 marked character, scientific eminence, and diversified 

 public service, would naturally expect that his biography 

 would be one of deep interest. It may seem ungracious 

 to criticize so strongly a son's tribute to his father, but we 

 fear that the verdict on the book of the general reader will 

 be that it is " deadly dull." Those, alone, will find it 

 interesting who, having known Airy himself, or who, 

 having been brought into close connexion with his work, 

 can clothe the " dry bones " of mere catalogues of papers, 

 meetings, and journeys with living memories of the man, 

 or with associations with the Eoyal Observatory, on which 

 he stamped so vividly his own personality. 



It is easy to explain how this undesirable effect has been 

 produced. The book consists for the most part of clippings 

 from Airy's diary — that is to say, from the memorandum 

 book of a most methodical business man— and from his 

 annual reports to the Board of Visitors, with but very 

 little explanatory or connecting remarks by the editor. 

 The annual reports are, of course, as dull as official reports 

 usually are, and such systematic quotation might well have 

 been spared us, as the reports themselves are readily 

 accessible to the student. The notes of private history 

 are even less satisfying, and run generally in some such 

 fashion as this : — 



" I was at Playford for a large part of January. On 

 March 26th I went to Beading to visit Mr. Sheepshanks, 

 and afterwards to Silchester and Hereford. On June 21st 

 I went with my wife and two eldest sons to Edinburgh 

 and other places in Scotland, but residing principally at 

 Oban, where I hired a house." 



The chief relief to this dry catalogue is afforded by the 

 admirable and discriminating " personal sketch " of his 

 father which Mr. Wilfred Airy has given in the first 

 chapter, and by the letters of Sir George which are scat- 

 tered far too sparingly throughout the book. A complete 

 list of all his books and papers is given in the appendix, 

 which makes one the more inclined to grudge the space 

 occupied by mere references to them in the body of the 

 work. 



The result of the method adopted is that the book is in 

 no true sense a biography or an autobiography of Sir 

 George Airy. It exhibits but only a portion of his chara3- 

 ter, and that by no means always the most pleasing. It 

 shows him to be a strong, egotistical, self-centred man. 

 His son speaks of him as " invulnerable to hero-worship "; 

 the book suggests that this was because outside worshippers 

 could not excel him in his keen appreciation of his own 

 merits. This, however, is mostly due to what we must 

 hold to be the unfortunate form in which the book is cast, 

 for Airy, though by no means prone to self-depreciation, 

 could register his mistakes and failures with great im- 

 partiality. His greatest mistake, however, escaped him. 

 This was that devotion to system and detail which he 

 carried to a disastrous excess. The result was, that for 

 the forty-six years during which he directed Greenwich 

 Observatory, a fatal proportion of his time and powers was 

 devoted to purely mechanical and routine work. 



And yet the work Airy did was stupendous, both in value 

 and amount, and by no means in astronomy alone ; and 

 this the book brings home to us with clearness and preci- 

 sion. As a storehouse of dates and facts relating to the 

 progress of science during the sixty years that followed 

 his taking his degree at Cambridge, it will be invaluable 

 to the student. 



TJie Student's Handbook of British Mosses. By H. N. 

 Dixon, M.A., F.L.S. With Illustrations and Key to the 

 Genera and Species by H. G. Jameson, M.A. (Wheldon 

 & Co.) 183. 6d. This practical handbook ought to be in the 

 possession of everyone taking up the study of the mosses 

 of our islands. Hitherto there has been really no work 

 which supplied the needs of bryological collectors and 

 students within comparatively modest dimensions. No 

 question can, therefore, be raised as to the opening for a 

 volume such as that under notice. The work begins with 

 a brief introduction, following which come a glossary, a 

 key to the genera, systematic descriptions of the orders, 

 genera, and species ; a good index, with synonyms ; and 

 sixty full-page plates, each representing characteristic 

 structures of ten or twelve species. All the information 

 required to identify and thence to classify mosses is thus 

 contained in the book, and it is presented in a form which 

 renders identification comparatively easy. The book needs 

 no further recommendation to the notice of students. 



Cock Lane and Common Sense. By Andrew Lang. New 

 Edition. (Longmans, Green, & Co.) 83. 6d. There is 

 such an enormous mass of fraud and trickery carried on 

 under the name of spiritualism that no wonder the great 

 majority of scientific men stand aloof from the subject. 

 Dr. A. E. Wallace, Mr. Crookes, and Prof. Oliver Lodge 

 have devoted their attention to psychical manifestations ; 

 but the chief conclusion to which their testimonies lead, 

 in many cases, is that the investigation of material things 

 does not necessarily endow men with the ability to discover 

 deception. But if there is a solid nucleus of truth amidst 

 the mass of falsehood classified as spiritualistic phenomena, 

 it is worth investigation, for every undiscovered fact is a 

 reproach to science. Mr. Andrew Lang urges that such 

 matters as wraiths, ghosts, corpse-candles, crystal-gazing, 

 haunted houses, fire-walking, and all the other branches 

 of " spookism " deserve to be studied, not so much because 

 a grain of reality might be found in them as because of 

 their anthropological bearings. Such things are recorded 

 and compared by folk-lorists and anthropologists so long 

 as they are part of vague rural tradition or savage belief, 

 but when the evidence is furnished by civilized people little 

 interest is taken in it. This position certainly does not 

 seem logical, and what Mr. Lang endeavours to do in the 

 present volume is to reconcile anthropology and folk-lore 

 with psychical research. Respectable evidence exists as 

 to the occurrence of abnormal physical phenomena ; and 

 though the facts may be the result of conjuring, and of 

 more or less hallucinatory experience, they are, Mr. Lang 

 holds, none the less proper subjects of anthropological 

 inquiry. But whether this is conceded or not, and whether 

 the reader is interested in the object in view or merely in 

 accounts of more or less inexplicable experiences, he will 

 derive pleasure from the perusal of " Cock Lane and 

 Common Sense." 



Mr. W. Trueman Tucker, F.G.S., has issued in pamphlet 

 form a paper read by him before the Leicester Literary 

 and Philosophical Society. The paper is an account of 

 " Some Supposed British Remains from Rothley, 

 Leicester." These remains consist of human skeletons 

 (some cremated) found in shallow graves, pottery, bronze 

 gilt fibula, coins, keys, a wooden image, and stone grinding 

 miUs. The pamphlet is illustrated with photographs of 

 several of the objects found. The author suggests that 

 these remains are of Ancient British origin, but the 

 evidence is slender, and needs confirmation. 



