6i4 



NATURE 



[Oi TOUliR 24, 1895 



The book, however, is too good to be dismissed with 

 commendation alone, and it would be unfair to its author 

 and readers if we omitted to indicate one or two points in 

 which its value may be increased in a future edition, 

 which will doubtless be soon required. The illustrations 

 are a weak feature of the book ; several are unsatis- 

 factory, being either rough in execution, wanting in detail, 

 or too small in size, and a few can serve no useful pur- 

 pose. We are sure the student would be grateful for the 

 improvement of some, the omission of others, and the 

 substitution for them of working drawings, not diagrams. 

 We trust the author will bear this in mind in the prepara- 

 tion of his companion volume on steel. 



The other faults are few and -of a minor character. 

 They are chiefly those of excessive condensation in the 

 sections dealing with the blast furnace. These sections 

 might be usefully expanded by the insertion of additional 

 details respecting the actual erection of a furnace ; also 

 of an example of actual working similar to the excellent 

 n'suiiu' given of the process of puddling. 



The book, however, is an excellent one, thoroughly up 

 to date, and a welcome addition to modern metallurgical 

 literature. We can confidently recommend it to metal- 

 lurgical students and all concerned with the manufacture 

 and use of iron. W. C.OWl Axn. 



THE LIFE OF RENNELL. 

 Major James Rennell and the Rise of Modern English 



Geography. By Clements R. Markham, C.H., F.R.S. 



(The Centur>- Science Series.) (London : Casscll and 



Co., 1895.) 

 " TAMES RENNELLwas the greatest geographer that 

 J Great Britain has yet produced." This, the first 

 sentence of the preface, is the text of the biography. 

 The authority of the President of the Royal Geographi- 

 cal .Society, himself the leading geographer of the day in 

 this country, may be accepted as sufficient evidence of 

 Renncll's pre-eminence. The name* would perhaps not 

 suggest itself to one who had a less thorough know- 

 ledge of the rise of modern English geography ; for until 

 the publication of this little volume, Rennell was with- 

 out any more pretentious memorial than an obituar>' 

 notice or a paragraph in a biographical dictionary. Mr. 

 Markham writes with an enthusiastic singleness of aim ; 

 intent on illustrating his theme, he has perhaps on one or 

 two occasions failed to criticise his own conclusions very 

 severely before accepting them. Possibly he may 

 unconsciously have applied the method post hoc ergo 

 propter hoc in connecting all British progress in geography 

 during the last fifty years with a name which cannot be 

 said to be familiar even amongst professed geographers. 

 Indeed we believe that this happily-timed biography will 

 make Kcnnell's example more fruitful in results in the next 

 few years than it has been during the sixty-five which 

 hiive elapsed since the death ol the great geographer. 



The lime is appropriate, for the recent meeting of the 

 international Geographical Congress in London has 

 brought into public notice the superiority of other nations 

 in the organised study of geography as a branch of 

 science definite and distinct from others, capable of 

 being cultivated by research and of being applied to 

 numberless practical purposes 

 NO. 1356, VOL. 52] 



Mr. Markham repudiates the suggestion that Major 

 Rennell was an "arm-chair geographer" : but we arc not 

 sure that this somewhat hackneyed term is necessarily 

 one of reproach. Rennell was greatest as a student and 

 a critic, and by the practical experience of his earlier life 

 he fitted himself to speak ex cxthedni on questions, where 

 insight and judgment were required to interpret, even to 

 the travellers themselves, the full meaning and importance 

 of their journeys. .A professor's chair would have been 

 his true place. 



The greatness of Major Rennell may best be under- 

 stood by a glance at the milcposts of his life. He was 

 bom in 1742, at Chudleigh, in Devon, and at the age of 

 fourteen he joined the Navy, where he saw some service 

 and learned to survey. In 1760 he went out to India as a 

 midshipman : but after three years' hard work, largely oc- 

 cupied in surveying in the Indian Ocean, he left the Navy, 

 joined the East India Company's service, and received 

 the command of a ship. As if by a stroke of magic he 

 was nominated Surveyor-General of Bengal and gazetted 

 an ensign in the Bengal Engineers in 1764, when only 

 twenty-one years of age. In this new and congenial 

 sphere he worked devotedly for thirteen years, personally 

 surveying the most unhealthy part of India with such 

 success that in 1779 he published the '" Bengal .^tl;^s " 

 containing the first authentic maps of the province. He 

 left India in 1777, and, settling in London, devoted 

 himself to critical geographical studies. His firs; purely 

 geographical work was a "Memoir to the Map of Hin- 

 dostan," and the map itself. In 17S1 he became a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society, and subsequently he communicated 

 two papers to the Philosophical Transactions. .Vlthough 

 ignorant of the classical languages, he studied the works 

 of the Greek geographers in translations, and so produced 

 his famous "tocography of Herodotus" and "Com- 

 parative Cieography of Western Asia." Then turning to 

 the burning question of his time in geography, the 

 penetration of Africa, he pieced together the information 

 brought home by Ledyard, Hornemann, Mungo Park, 

 and other explorers sent out by the African Association. 

 Here the results of subsequent discovery did not always 

 confirm the provisional conclusions he arrived at from a 

 critical study of the data at his disposal, but his con- 

 troversies as to the course of the Niger interest the 

 world no more. 



Mr. Markham considers that Rennell was " the founder 

 of another branch of the science of geograi)hy, which 

 has since been called oceanography " ; yet we fintl in Dr. 

 Murray's compendious histor)' of oceanography in the 

 summary of the scientific results of the Challenger 

 Expedition, a much more ancient lineage for that br.inch 

 of science, and in the record of its development Kcnnell's 

 name is not even mentioned. He certainly succeeded in 

 calling attention to the importance of ocean currents, and 

 made many shrewd observations as to their origin, pre- 

 paring the way for the wider generalisations of Maury. 

 He strongly held the theorj' that ocean currents are 

 primarily due to the prevailing winds ; and it is interest- 

 ing to notice that the particular current issuing from the 

 Bay of Biscay, to which his own name is attached, should 

 only last year have been shown by Hautreux to have no 

 permanent pla( c, but to vary in force and direction "ith 

 the changes of the wind. 



