February S, 1894] 



NA TURE 



139 



and Ireland, but also to America, India, Australia, Canada, 

 and other parts of the world where Scotsmen have congre- 

 gated, must have added to the value of the book. But, 

 in this connection, the grave omission is that there is no 

 reference to the history and records of the Blackheath 

 Club, the oldest club in the United Kingdom. 

 This is all the more remarkable, that a bright de- 

 scription of " Medal Day at Blackheath " has a place 

 in the book. 



The most serious complaint is left to the last, and 

 that is that the editor should say in the note referred 

 to that he has abandoned his intention of writing his 

 own reminiscences. The reason assigned, that the 

 books of his friends are a bar, will not bear examination. 

 These books, clever and able as they are, were born of 

 the high spirits of the hour, and were never thought of 

 by their authors as anything but ephemeral. They served 

 and are serving a good purpose ; they amuse and instruct 

 their generation, and it matters little that they have 

 induced many to contort themselves into the oddest of 

 attitudes. The editor and his friends might furnish an 

 interesting chapter of the history of the game. They 

 have seen the days, when the grand manner was not yet 

 dead, when the style of the front rank Golfers was dis- 

 tinguished by something more than force and mammoth 

 driving, when it was as graceful as that of the play of 

 fence of a first-rate swordsman ; the days when the social 

 life of Golf was free from some of the irksome bonds 

 which it now wears. How many now remember an 

 incident that marked an epoch, the boys' tournament of 

 the summer of i860, organ-ised at great expense of time 

 and trouble by the late Sheriff Gordon ! How few know 

 anything of him ! And yet he was as distinct a type of 

 a Scotchman of a past generation as singing Jamie 

 Balfour, whose effigy is one of the adornments of the 

 book. It is to be hoped that the editor may reconsider 

 his decision, and add a chapter on modern Golf, stopping 

 short of the time when it became the fashion. As it 

 stands, the book is the only book indispensable to the 

 Golfer, and its wider circulation will no doubt lead many 

 to the great house of Golf. There they will read, and feel 

 the truth of, the legend inscribed in indehble letters upon 

 the portals : lude Sains. 



Let the last words here on this subject be the words of 

 an enthusiast : — 



" Plaudere, non jubeo" (you may do that at cricket) " sed 

 magna voce frementes, 

 Dicite : In eeternum tloreat alma domus. 

 Floreat." 



W. Rutherford. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes. Vol. i. Bvthe 

 Rev. T. W. Webb. Fifth edition, revised and enlarged, 

 by the Rev. T. E. Espin, M.A., F.R.A.S. (London : 

 Longmans, Green & Co., 1893.) 



Since the original edition of Webb's " Celestial Objects" 

 was published in 1859, no book has appeared which has 

 found greater favour in the eyes of amateur astronomers. 

 Written by one who had seen the wonders and glories of 

 the heavens, the work has always been recognised as 

 sounding the genuine ring that results from rich ex- 

 .perience ; and by entrusting the editing of the fifth 



NO, 1267, VOL. 49] 



edition to the Rev. T. E. Espin, the publishers have acted 

 wisely, for he is an observer versed in both the old and 

 the new astronomy. 



The work has been divided into two volumes, the first 

 of which is before us. This volume is concerned with 

 the subjects of parts i. and ii. of the original work ; the 

 second, which will probably be published shortly, covers 

 part iii. and is the book for the observatory. In some 

 respects, this division of matter is an improvement, for 

 descriptions of astronomical phenomena can very well 

 be kept apart from lists of celestial sights. Mr. Espin is 

 wholly responsible for the volume as yet unpublished, 

 and as it has been entirely rewritten, we may confidently 

 expect many important innovations. In the volume 

 under review, very few alterations of the original text 

 have been made. To bring the book up to date, workers 

 in different branches of astronomy have contributed 

 additional matter on the subjects in which they are 

 specialists. One of the results arising from this 

 division of labour is that the chapters are extremely 

 unequal. The new matter is added in foot-notes, but 

 we think the book would have gained in value if it had 

 been incorporated in the text. Among these notes is 

 one on celestial photography, and another on spectro- 

 scopy as applied to the telescope. In the latter we read 

 that " Stellar spectra were divided by Secchi into five 

 types," and closely following this remark is given a 

 classification in which Type v. includes bright line stars 

 and nebulas. But Secchi only distinguished four types of 

 stellar spectra, and it was not until 1891 that Pickering 

 proposed to add a fifth type to Secchi's classification. There 

 is another matter that might be more clearly expressed. 

 In the brief statement of the use of the objective-prism for 

 obtaining photographs of the spectra of stars, it is not men- 

 tioned that the prism must be fixed over the object-glass 

 with its edges east and west. If the prism is arranged with 

 its edges north and south, no amount of regulation of the 

 driving-clock will expand the linear star-image into a 

 band upon the photographic plate. These omissions are, 

 however, very slight, and Mr. Espin will doubtless 

 remedy them at the first opportunity. They certainly do 

 not lessen the welcome we extend to this new edition 

 of an excellent book. 



Plane Trigonotnetry. By S. L. Loney. (Cambridge : 

 University Press, 1893.) 



In the 500 pages of which this volume consists, the 

 author has placed before students of trigonometry an 

 elementary text-book which only wants reading carefully 

 to be thoroughly understood. One cannot do more than 

 state in clear and plain language the various methods of 

 expressing trigonometrical ratios, the applications of alge- 

 braic signs, ratios of multiple and sub-multiple angles, 

 &c. ; and this the author has done, interpolating neatly 

 printed figures and concise explanations wherever they 

 seem necessary for a clearer exposition. A great number 

 of excellent examples is also given, the answers being 

 collected at the end. No very marked deviations from 

 the usual sequence of the subject-matter adopted in such 

 text-books have been made, but it is noticeable that here 

 and there are given at some length many pieces of 

 book- work which are passed over in a few words in some 

 books. The second of the two parts into which the book 

 is divided deals more with the analytical side of trigono- 

 metry, that is, with exponential and logarithmic series, 

 expansions of trigonometrical quantities, summations 

 of series, &c. In this part the treatment of complex 

 quantities has been so handled as to lead the student up 

 to the methods of the more advanced treatises. The 

 concluding two chapters deal briefly with errors of ob- 

 servations, some miscellaneous propositions, solution of a 

 cubic equation, maximum and minimum values, &c. A 

 very useful list of all the principal formute which the 



