174 



NATURE 



[June 23, 1904 



OVR BOOK SHELF. 



On the Location and Examination of Magnetic Ore 



Deposits by Magnetometric Measurements. By 



Eugene Haanel. Pp. ix+132 and plates. (Ottawa, 



Canada : Department of the Interior, 1904.) 



Dr. Haanel, Superintendent of Mines to the Canadian 



Government, read a paper under the above title at the 



annual meeting of the Canadian Mining Institute in 



the spring of last year, which is now published in book 



form by direction of the Minister of the Interior. 



The work is substantially an account of the Swedish 

 method of locating by means of specially constructed 

 magnetometers the presence of magnetic ore deposits, 

 and of determining their strike, direction of dip, and 

 depth below the surface. 



Von Wrede, as far back as 1^43, indicated the value 

 of the magnetometer in determining the location and 

 extent of such deposits, but the first to turn the sugges- 

 tion to practical account was Robert Thalen, who, in 

 1879, published his work " On the Examination of 

 Iron Ore Deposits by Magnetic Measurements." 

 Since that time the method has been greatlv developed, 

 and convenient field instruments — the Thal(^n-Tiberg 

 magnetometer and the Thomson-Thalen magneto- 

 meter — are now placed by Swedish mechanicians at 

 the disposal of mining experts. As yet, however, the 

 knowledge and use of these instruments have been 

 almost exclusively confined to Sweden, although 

 scattered references to their employment are to be met 

 with in English mining and scientific literature. 



Riicker and Thorpe, in their great magnetic survey 

 of the British Isles, showed the value of the magneto- 

 meter in determining the presence and the contour of 

 underground magnetic material, and they were the 

 first to direct the attention of English geologists to the 

 importance of this instrument in geological inquiry. 



Dr. Haanel has rendered the mining profession a 

 great service by putting together a concise account of 

 the Swedish method and practice. Bv the help of this 

 manual a properly trained mining engineer would have 

 comparatively little difficulty in mastering the theory 

 of the field instruments and in acquiring familiarity 

 with their use. 



Whether, however, the greater number of English 

 mining engineers are sufficiently well trained to follow 

 the mathematical treatment of the theorv, as set forth 

 by Dr. Haanel, may be open to doubt. 



Spokil, an International Language. By Dr. Ad. 

 Nicolas. Pp. viii + 272. (Paris: A. Maloine, 1904.) 

 This work consists of eight pages of preface, of 

 eighteen pages of "grammar," of fortv-four pages of 

 exercises, and of 203 pages of a " Spok'il "-French dic- 

 tionary. The language consists of two kinds of words ; 

 those borrowed from existing languages with slight 

 modifications and those coined on a system. The sys- 

 tem is ingenious, but, in the opinion" of the reviewer, 

 quite unworkable. To take an instance :— To the 

 letter " P " is attached various ideas; for example, 

 those of motion, the foot, weight and the preposition 

 " after." Thus we find Pimo, heavy; Pino, light; for 

 the letter n contradicts the letter m; Peme, to lead; 

 Pene, to come; the idea of "leading" being anti- 

 thetical to that of "coming"; Pleal, wood; and 

 Plealta, absence of wood ; the idea of absence 

 or default arising from the affix " ta " ; and so 

 on. .\s in Esperanto, different parts of speech are 

 distinguished by different vowels, as, for example, 

 Arta, dirt, or a dirty object; Arte, to dirty; 

 .\rto, dirty ; and Artu, dirtily. The language is in what 

 may be ternaed the agglutinative stage ; for we have 

 Apafil, derived from Ap, to lead, af, off, and il, agent; 

 the whole word means an abductor. It may interest 



NO. 1808, VOL. 70] 



chemists to know that the future name of butylene is to 

 be eul vokilo; for e stands for carbon, u for hydrogen, 

 1 is terminative; vo means four, ki eight, and lo is the 

 termination of a noun (?). English plurals in s are bor- J 

 rowed ; likewise our classification of genders. The de- I 

 finite and indefinite articles are retained in the singular ■ 

 and plural, the latter in the plural in the sense of " the 

 ones "; and the French " du " and " des " also appear 

 in both numbers. 



Enough has probably been said to give an idea of the 

 character of the grammar; in conclusion, we will show 

 what is " to serve as a model to future speakers "; it is 

 " Zu erve di teil da Ics espel zoio. " We do not think 

 that that will be the fate of this artificial language. 

 And it may be confidently supposed that the future uni- 

 versal language will not be invented bv a Frenchman. 

 There have been a good many attempts ; and thev all 

 tend far too much towards inflection. Probablv the 

 most perfect languages from that point of view are 

 those of the native Australians, who possess singular, 

 dual, trial and plural, who have inclusive " we " and 

 " they," as, well as exclusive, and who indicate in half- 

 a-dozen ways the particular position of the object de- 

 signated by the word " that." The idea of an inter- 

 national language is an admirable one, and it will no 

 doubt be realised, but the end is not yet come, and it is 

 certainly not " Spokil." 



The Non-Metallic Minerals: Tlieir Occurrence and 

 Uses. By George P. Merrill. Pp. xi + 414. (New 

 York : John Wiley and Sons, 1904 ; London : Chap- 

 man and Hall, Ltd.) Price 17s. net 

 The author of this valuable work is head curator 

 of geology in the L'nited States National Museum, 

 and in 1901 he issued a scholarly guide to the 

 study of the collections in the section of applied geology. 

 Upon this guide he has founded the present work in 

 which he brings together the widely-scattered notes 

 and references relating to the occurrence and use of 

 minerals of value other than as ores. Much of the in- 

 formation he gives is quite new, particularly in regard 

 to the occurrence of American minerals ; and the value 

 of the work is greatly enhanced by the well-selected 

 ])hotographs of quarries and of striking specimens. 

 .\mong these the views of the big vein between the 

 peridotite and gneiss at Corundum Hill, North 

 Carolina ; of the quarry of lithographic limestone at 

 Solenhofen, Bavaria; of large spodumene crystals in 

 granitic rock, Etta Mine, South Dakota; and of 

 quarries of bituminous sandstone in California and in 

 Indian territory', are of special interest. 



The scheme of classification adopted is as follows : — 

 (i) Elements, (2) sulphides and arsenides, (3) halides, 

 (4) oxides, (5) carbonates, (6) silicates, (7) niobates, tan- 

 talates and tungstates, (8) phosphates and vanadates, 

 (9) nitrates, (10) borates, (11) uranates, (12) sulphates, 

 (13) hvdrocarbon compounds, and (14) miscellaneous, in- 

 cluding grindstones, pumice, moulding sand, road- 

 making materials, &c. Gems, building stones and 

 marbles are not included in the scheme. Under each 

 species will be found an excellent bibliography, and 

 much interesting comment and information regarding 

 its uses. For example, we are told that at Oberstein. 

 on the Nahe, schoolboys' marbles are made in great 

 quantities from limestone. The stone is broken into 

 square blocks, which arc thrown into a mill consisting' 

 of a flat horizontally revolving stone with numerous 

 concentric grooves on its surface. A block of oak, of 

 the same diameter as the stone and resting on the cubes, 

 is then made to revolve over them in a current of water, 

 the cubes being' thus reduced to the spherical form in 

 about fifteen minutes. 



Of lithographic stone a series of analyses are given 



