110 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[May 1, 1899. 



camera, or on a tripod stand, requires one lens only, has 

 the advantage of a reversing back, square shutter and 

 finder, and that moat ingenious contrivance, the automatic 

 release. 



What promises to be one of the most valuable geo- 

 graphical works ever published will shortly be issued by 

 Messrs. George Newnes, Limited, under the title of " The 

 International Geography." The volume will be inter- 

 national in authorship as well as in scope, no less than 

 seventy leading geographers, each the highest authority 

 on the section with which he deals, having taken part in 

 its preparation. Among the authors on general geo- 

 graphical principles are Dr. A. M. W. Downing, f.r.s., 

 who writes on mathematical geography ; Sir John 

 Murray, f.r.s., on the oceans ; Prof. J. Arthur Thomson 

 on the distribution of living creatures ; and Dr. J. Scott 

 Keltie on political and applied geography. Various parts 

 of Europe are described by such distinguished geographers 

 as Prof. A. de Lapparent, Prof. A. Penck, Dr. Thoroddsen, 

 Prof. A. Phillipson, and Prof. A. Kirohhoff. Among the 

 authors dealing with different parts of Asia are Sir G. S. 

 Robertson, Sir C. W. Wilson, f.r.s., Mrs. Bishop, Dr. 

 H. 0. Forbes, and Captain E. de Vasconcellos. The Hon. 

 D. W. Carnegie, the Hon. J. W. Pieeves, and Sir William 

 Macgregor occur among the authors on parts of Australasia 

 and Polynesia ; Profs. W. M. Davis and A. Heilprin on 

 North America ; Sir Clements Markham, f.r.s., Dr. W. 

 Sievers, and Mr. J. Rodway on Central and South America ; 

 Dr. J. W. Gregory, Sir H. H. Johnston, the late Sir R. 

 Lambert Playfair, and the Eight Hon. James Bryce, m.p., 

 on Africa ; and Dr. Nansen and Sir W. Martin Conway on 

 the Polar regions. The whole work is edited by Dr. H. R. 

 MUl, who has devoted the best part of two years to its 

 preparation. Judging from the prospectus and the names 

 it contains, the volume will be an indispensable handbook 

 of geography. 



The "Biokam," an instrument for amateurs interested 

 in the production of livinf/ pictuns, is a novelty put on the 

 market by the Warwick Trading Company, and strikes us 

 as being eminently adapted for bottling up, so to speak, 

 those animated scenes, incidents and phenomena, when 

 for reasons, general or special, their reproduction may 

 serve some useful purpose. The " Biokam " is so compact, 

 portable, moderate in price, and easy of manipulation, that 

 it bids fair to attain the same degree of popularity as the 

 ordinary camera. Indeed, the film, twenty-five feet in 

 length, and containing as many as seven hundred pictures, 

 can be wound on a sort of creel and developed as easUy as 

 an ordinary plate. The exposure, by means of a train of 

 wheels, can be effected at such a speed that each separate 

 impression is practically instantaneous, and thus an 

 unlimited number of midget portraits or photographs of 

 scenery may be taken with a minimum of trouble. The 

 instrument is provided with two lenses — one for negatives, 

 the other for projection purposes, by which means living 

 pictures taken by the amateur himself may be thrown 

 upon the screen for his own delectation and that of his 

 fdends. 



We have received many letters in reference to a com- 

 munication addressed to the Times early in April, and 

 signed "Knowledge." The letter in question did not 

 emanate from us. 



British Ornithological Notes. — These Notes are un- 

 avoidably held over until next month. 



i^ottcts of Boolts. 



— * 



Recent Advances in Astronomy. By A. H. Fison, D.SC.(lond.). 

 The Victorian Era Series. (Blackie & Son.) "Under the 

 general editorship of Mr. J. Holland Rose, M.A., late scholar of 

 Christ's College, Cambridge, the individual volumes are con- 

 tributed by leading specialists in the various branches of 

 knowledge which fall to be treated in the series." It is there- 

 fore passing strange tliat Mr. Rose should have selected for his 

 author one whose work lies outside the domain of astronomy. 

 It is especially evident in the last three chapters, dealing with 

 the analyses of sunlight and starlight, and with the red flames 

 of the sun, that Dr. Fison is an " outsider '' in astronomy, and 

 that his own work has been in the terrestrial laboratory, not in 

 the celestial. He treats very well of the fundamental laws of 

 light and chemistry, and shows how they are adaptable to 

 astronomical research: but these adaptations were made a quarter 

 of a century ago, and Dr. Fison has scarcely attempted to follow 

 them in their application in the regions of pure astronomy. 

 He goes fnlly into any labor.atory experiments in chemistry that 

 may bear on astronomical results. He touches lightly on the 

 stellar velocities in the line of sight. He just mentions the 

 Harvard spectral surveys : but we look in vain for any discussion 

 of the spectra of sunspots and faculse, for any mention even of 

 the broadening or " reversal '' of lines over them. Above all, he 

 does not touch at all on the knowledge that we have obtained 

 in the later Victorian ^e through eoUpses, of the sun's chemistry 

 or the sun's surroundings — without which surely the analysis of 

 sunlight is scarcely even begun. To his readers the " corona "' 

 is something that no two people see alike — like the rainbow. 

 In his study of Mars, Dr. Fison's limitations are less noticeable, 

 seeing that his treatment is based on purely theoretical con- 

 siderations. In the first two chapters also, bearing on the life- 

 history and distribution of the stars, he does excellently, in so 

 far as he deals with mathematical or theoretical conditions. 

 We would like to protest, however, against the introduction into 

 a work that deals with the facts not the fictions of astronomy, 

 of Miidler's absolutely baseless suggestion of a great central 

 influence in the Pleiades. In his ingenious simile also of the 

 distribution of stars to the conditions of things imagined in the 

 kinetic theory of gases, he suggests that the stellar system wiU 

 eventually disintegrate through the escape of members acquiring 

 high velocities (like Groombridge, 18iJ0), forgetting that in- 

 crease of velocity attained by one star means the decrease by 

 another, and that the process tends rather to aggregation. 

 Had Dr. Fison had a practical training in astronomy, and had 

 he still further confined the departments of this science of which 

 he treats (for the volumes of this series are quite small), his 

 book would be an admirable one, for he is careful in his work, 

 his style is good, and his judgment clear and critical. 



Landmarks in Enrjlish Industrial History. By George Townsend 

 Warner, m.a. (Blackie.) 5s. As regards matter, the author 

 makes no claim to originality in these pages ; but, as each his- 

 torical event in England's industrial and commercial progress 

 in the past is important, not only by itself but also in its bearing 

 on other events, the grouping of events round chief landmarks 

 or epochs is intended to bring out these connections more fully : 

 it is in this co-ordination of agricultural, mechanical and econo- 

 mic historical information that the novelty of the book consists. 

 Chronological order is thus, to some considerable extent, tra- 

 versed ; indeed, the book really consists of a number of essays, 

 in which certain topics are selected, such as the rise of hanking, 

 machinery and power, trade and the flag, trading companies 

 and colonial expansion, towns and gilds ; and thus the author 

 seeks to convey broad, general notions of the great factors in 

 our civilization. The plan is very good. Instead of the history 

 of kings and queens we get the broader and larger history of 

 the people and their institutions. In place, however, of one 

 slight volume for so gigantic a task, very many would be re- 

 quired to give anything like an adequate account on the same 

 lines as here carried out ; it is but fragmentary at best — an 

 amputated appendage of a great idea, and taken as such it is a 

 book which will be read with interest. 



Outlines of Industrial Chemistry. By Dr. Frauk Hall Thor|), 

 (Macmillan.) Illustrated. 15s. net. Apparently, at the outset, 

 the author, or rather the compiler, of this book, intended to 

 cover the whole range of industrial chemistry — a very laudable 



