February i, 1S94] 



NA TURE 



Z^Z 



232S locomotives, 302 stationary engines, 267 stationary 

 boilers, 1023 hydraulic machines, and 416 cranes of every 

 kind, besides many other mechanical appliance?, the super- 

 vision of which come under the locomotive department. 



Mr. A. J. Brickwell, of the surveyors' department of 

 the Great Northern Railway, is the author of Chapter 

 iii. describing the locomotive work of that company at 

 Doncaster. High speed has always been associated 

 with the Great Northern, and very properly so, for this 

 company has always held the palm in this respect, thanks 

 to the magnificent engines designed by Mr. Stirling, the 

 locomotive engineer. A passable illustration of Xo. 776 

 engine, built in 1S87, gives some idea of the bold outline 

 of the " flyers " that daily tackle the " Scotchman " 

 express, and seldom drop a minute on the road. What 

 locomotive engineer, besides Mr. Stirling, of Doncaster, 

 can point to engines like these, designed twenty-three 

 years ago, and can still claim that the engines are able 

 to hold their own with their present-day rivals, be they 

 compound or otherwise ? 



Chapter iv., by Mr. Wilson Worsdell, the locomotive 

 superintendent of the North-Eastern Railway, deals with 

 the works of that company, and we naturally read a 

 good deal about the virtues of the two-cylinder com- 

 pound locomotive, besides the excellent description of 

 the works. As this company is building some very 

 powerful non-compound express engines, it would appear 

 that compounding is not the source of economy hitherto 

 claimed for this system. 



The Great Eastern Railway Works at Stratford are 

 described by the secretary to the locomotive superinten- 

 dent, Mr. Alex. P. Parker. The article is well written 

 and interesting, notwithstanding the absurdity of claim- 

 ing credit for throwing an engine together in ten hours. 

 Everything at Stratford is certainly on the most modern 

 system of management and manufacture, and those 

 responsible may well take credit for being "up to date." 



Chapter vi. is of much interest, because it deals with 

 the Great Western Railway Company's works at Swindon, 

 and particularly so because of the now defunct broad- 

 gauge system with Sir Daniel Gooch's noble engines. 

 These are well illustrated in the text, and some exciting 

 runs on the engine of the " Dutchman " are described. 

 The following chapter deals with the new narrow-gauge 

 engines built to take the place of the veterans when the 

 line was converted to the narrow gauge. 



The last chapter in the book is on the Cowlairs Works 

 of the North British Railway, the only Scotch railway 

 described, the author being Mr. A, E. Lockyer, of the 

 locomotive department. This article is interesting, but 

 it appears to be unduly curtailed, and has fewer illus- 

 trations than the other chapters ; the illustrations that 

 are included, however, are certainly the clearest in the 

 book. The unique part of this chapter is the description 

 of the working of the trains up the incline at Cowlairs 

 from the Glasgow terminus at Queen Street, by means of 

 a stationary engine and endless wire rope. The descrip- 

 tion of the works is good. 



Altogether the volume is most interesting, and should 

 be read by all connected with, or travelling by, the rail- 

 ways of this country, containing, as it does, much unique 

 information on a subject little thought of outside the 

 railway circle. N. J. Lockyer. 



NO. 1266, VOL. 4q] 



ESSENTIALS OF CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 

 The Essentials of Chemical Physiology. By Prof. W. D. 



Halliburton. (London : Longmans, Green, and Co 



1893-) 

 T^HERE is no doubt that this elementary text-book 

 -»- by Prof. Halliburton will be welcomed by students 

 of chemical physiology. The teaching of physiology has 

 come to be so much a matter of laboratory instruction 

 that the demand for carefully written text-books dealing 

 with the practical parts of the science, has become a very 

 pressing one. This book is a companion volume to Prof. 

 Schafer's "Essentials of Histology." It is constructed 

 on the plan originally adopted in the syllabus of lectures 

 by Prof. Burdon Sanderson. At the beginning of each 

 chapter there is a series of exercises which form practical 

 illustrations of the subject with which the chapter deals. 

 The exposition which follows the list of exercises is mani- 

 festly the work of one who is a master in the modern 

 methods of teaching, and the frequent references to 

 recent research give to these chapters an interest which 

 is unfortunately sometimes absent from text-books. The 

 elementary is followed by an advanced course, in which 

 are given the more elaborate exercises on the subjects of 

 the earlier chapters. In this course perhaps too little 

 attention is paid to experiments on the living organism. 

 The exercises given are concerned chiefly with those 

 substances which can be extracted from the organism by 

 some means or other. We have, for example, a chapter 

 on hccmoglobin, in which we get instruction in regard to 

 substances such as alkaline ha^matin, hasmochromogen, 

 haematoporphyrin. There are no exercises on oxygen or 

 carbonic acid, and yet the relation of these gases to the 

 organism is surely of vastly greater importance in physio- 

 logy than haemochromogen. Similarly we have the 

 analysis of urine considered even so far as to include the 

 estimation of creatinine, while there are no exercises 

 showing how the constituents are related to physiological 

 conditions. 



The function of such instruction as we find in this book 

 is not only to bring physiology to practical expression, 

 but to show its relation to the questions of practical 

 medicine ; and exercises, with this in view, are more to be 

 desired than the estimation of creatinine. The diffi- 

 culties in the way are not such as to prevent the intro- 

 duction of experiments of the kind suggested. 



In the appendix the author describes one or two 

 examples of complicated apparatus, and gives some 

 chemical tests. Apparatus in the complicated forms is 

 always a burden to the physiologist, and any allusion to 

 it should appear in an appendix, if at all. It is difficult 

 to see why the author has placed Kjeldahl's method for 

 estimating nitrogen in the appendix. The method is an 

 easy one and is in universal use, and should be familiar 

 to advanced students. It would also be well to present it 

 to beginners in some simpler form than that which is 

 given here. 



i\part from its relation to experimental work the book 

 is of interest in so far as it gives indication of a new de- 

 parture in physiology. We are told that " the chemist 

 cannot, at present, state anything positive about living 

 matter." So far as we know apparently, we cannot say 

 that there are any chemical changes in living cells. 



