August 30, 1894J 



NATURE 



425 



and, after a short time, sufficient funds were raised to 

 appoint a Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry. 

 Dr. Thomas Garnett was nominated for this post in May, 

 1796. Three years later Count Rumford founded the 

 Royal Institution, and Garnett accepted the first pro- 

 fessorship in it. He was succeeded at the Ander- 

 son's Institution by Dr. George Birkbeck, who after- 

 wards assisted in founding the well-known Birkbeck 

 Insiitution in London. Dr. lire next occupied the chair, 

 and when he retired it was decided to appoint two 

 professors — one of Natural Philosophy and one of 

 Chemistry. Among the men who occupied the former 

 chair at different times were Dr. William Heron, Dr. 

 John Taylor, Prof. Carey Foster, and Prof A. S. Her- 

 schel. The chair of chemistry was successively filled by 

 Thomas Graham, Dr. William Gregory, Dr. Penny, Dr. 

 T. E. Thorpe, and Prof. Dittmar. About 1830 Graham 

 established a public laboratory for experimental work in 

 chemistry, the tirst of its kind in Great Britain, and 

 among the students who worked in it were Dr. James 

 Young, Lord Playfair, and Dr. Walter Crum. Into the 

 various changes which the institution has undergone we 

 do not propose to enter. Suffice it to say that Ander- 

 son's College, the Mechanics' Institute, and the Allan 

 Glen's School were united in 18S2 to form the Glas- 

 gow and West of Scotland Technical College. The 

 Mechanics' Institution, or College of Science and Arts, 

 mentioned in this connection, was founded in 1823 as the 

 result of the secession of some members of the .Ander- 

 son's Institution. Lord Kelvin and his brother, the late 

 Prof James Thomson, studied for some time at the former 

 institution. 



The present Technical College, and the institutions 

 from which it was formed, has had many distinguished 

 men among its teachers and students. Prof. Sexton's 

 history of the whole organisation is not merely of local 

 interest, but appeals to all interested in the growth of 

 technical education. The illustrations in his book are 

 numerous, but mostly very bad, and the descriptive text 

 might have been far more brightly written. 



Practical Work in General Physics. By W. G. WooU- 

 combe, M.A., B.Sc. Pp. 83. (Oxford: Clarendon 

 Press, 1894.) 

 Instruction in practical physics is steadily, though very 

 slowly, gaining ground in our schools and colleges. The 

 tardy recognition of the great importance of this kind of 

 work is doubtless due to the fact that practical physics 

 does not bear directly on industrial and commercial pur- 

 suits. But, for training the mind, there is no better means 

 ■than a course of physical laboratory practice. The hand 

 is exercised in delicacy of manipulation ; the eye is led to 

 perceive instead of seeing things vacantly ; and the mind 

 is trained to make scientific deductions from observed 

 facts. Whether a boy is designed to be a politician or a 

 preacher, whether it is intended that he should follow the 

 law or be sacrificed to science, in fact, no matter what 

 the calling or profession in which he has to work his way 

 through life, by far the best mode of obtaining the ac- 

 curacy of observation and deduction desirable in everj-- 

 one, is through instruction in practical physics. It is be- 

 cause we believe this, that we welcome any indication of 

 the extension of such knowledge. Mr. WooUcombe is 

 the author of a little book on practical work in heat, 

 which we were able to commend when it appeared. The 

 present volume deserves the same praise that we gave 

 the previous one. It begins with descriptions of such 

 instruments as the linear vernier, sliding callipers, micro- 

 meter screw gauge, and balance, and passes on to the 

 measurement of length, area, and volume. The experi- 

 ments performed under these heads lead naturally to the 

 determination of the densities of solids, liquids, and 

 .gases, and then to Boyle's Law, the barometer, and capil- 

 Jarity. This order is practically the same as that fol- 



NO. 1296, VOL. 50] 



lowed in " A First Course of Physical Laboratory Practice," 

 by Prof. .\. M. Worthington, F.R.S., published eight 

 years ago. Indeed, Mr. Woollcombe's book reminds us of 

 Prof. Worthington's in more than one respect; but a 

 similarity of gradation and general treatment almost 

 inevitably exists between books covering the same 

 ground. 



The author is among those who take every oppor- 

 tunity of correcting the sense in which the word 

 weight is generally understood. An aphorism of his 

 worth quoting is : " We can no more lock up forces in 

 a box than Pandora could imprison Hope in a casket, so 

 that it is incorrect to talk of a box of weights— xht. cor- 

 rect term being a box of masses." We hope that a time 

 will come when books similar to the one under notice 

 will be required in all our public schools and colleges. 



Manual of Practical Logarithms. By W. N. Wilson, 



M.A. (London : Rivington, Percival, and Co., 1894.) 

 The great importance of a sound knowledge of the use 

 of logarithms, and the frequency of their application in the 

 majority of sciences, is sufficient to account for the 

 appearance of such books as that under review, entirely 

 devoted to their exposition. The subject is treated to a 

 small extent in many of the larger text-books on algebra 

 and trigonometry, but their insertion there is more to 

 acquaint the student with the principles than to give 

 him a good working knowledge, which can only be 

 obtained by constant solving of problems. 



In the book which we have under notice, the author 

 assumes that the reader has had such a smatter- 

 ing of the subject as above suggested, since he 

 purposely omits the propositions and formuls found 

 in most of the text-books, and devotes his whole atten- 

 tion to the treatment of various methods of solving prob- 

 lems with their aid. The examples dealt with, illustrate 

 those branches of arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, 

 and mensuration, and those that are worked out are 

 given in the forms that the student himself is advised 

 to adopt. 



The author deviates here from the usual method of writ- 

 ing the characteristic before the mantissa, by placing it 

 afterwards. His reason for doing so is that he thus 

 avoids the necessity of using the old and clumsy nota- 

 tion, as he calls it, for denoting the combination of a 

 negative characteristic with a positive mantissa. The 

 method here adopted has, no doubt, its advantages, and 

 might facilitate matters for beginners, who nearly always 

 find this a difficult point to surmount. 



The reader is supplied with plenty of examples to 

 practise his ingenuity upon, many of them being selected 

 from various examination papers for the Army, Navy 

 Oxford, and Cambridge, &c. 



In the absence of any external assistance, close at- 

 tention to the methods of solution employed in the book 

 should give the reader a good insight not only in the right 

 way of handling and becoming familiar with tables, but 

 in the art of successfully attackmg problems by their aid. 



W. J. L. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[7 he Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejectea 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 Ho notice is taken of anonymous communications. ] 



Towards the Efficiency of Sails, Windmills, Screw- 

 Propellers, in Water and Air, and Aeroplanes. 



The discussion of this day week, on flying machine^, in the 

 British Associ.ition was not, for want of lime, carried so far as 

 to prove from the numerical results of observation put before 

 the meeting by Mr. Ma.xim, that the resistance of the air against 



