August 1 1, 1904] 



NA TURE 



339 



Kitchen g-arden of all manner of herbes, rootes, and 

 fruites. for meate or sause used with us, and An 

 Orchard of all sorte of fruit-bearing Trees and 

 shrubbes fit for our Land together With the right 

 orderinge, planting and preserving of them and their 

 USPS and virtues. Collected by John Parkinson, 

 Apothecary of London, 1629." It will be observed that 

 the first five words mean " of Park-in-Sun the Earthly 

 Paradise," and this play upon his own name is missed 

 in the special title of the reprint. 



It is impossible even to indicate the charm of this 

 old book ; a long notice would still be inadequate, 

 while to those who love old garden flowers and these 

 quaint notices of them, this reprint will afford a new 

 delight. B. D. J. 



MODERN ELECTRIC PRACTICE. 



Modern Electric Practice. Edited by Magnus 

 .Maclean. In six volumes. Vol. i., pp. viii + 270. 

 \'ol. ii., pp. vi + 2q7. Vol. iii., pp. vi + 285. 

 (London : The Gresham Publishing Co., 1904.) 

 Price 9^. net per volume. 



THESE volumes have been published with the inten- 

 tion of providing a comprehensive treatise on 

 the subject of modern electrical engineering, a subject 

 now so large and so diversified that it is beyond the 

 power of one man, however expert, to deal with it in 

 all its aspects. The plan has therefore been adopted 

 of inviting the collaboration of a number of authors, 

 each writing of that section with which he is par- 

 ticularlv conversant, and thus producing a sort of 

 encvclopaedia of electrical engineering which might be 

 compared with such books as Watts 's " Dictionary of 

 Chemistry." It is difficult to form an estimate of the 

 value of a book of this kind, which depends as much 

 upon the skill and discretion which are shown in the 

 selection and arrangement of the material as upon the 

 merits possessed by the individual contributions. 



Regarded as a whole we consider this compilation 

 disappointing in the extreme. A really standard work 

 of reference on electrical engineering would be a very 

 welcome addition to electrical literature, a book to 

 which a man could turn for information about any 

 matter which happened to crop up in the course of 

 his work, certain of finding a thorough resume of the 

 subject sufficient to give him the outlines of existing 

 l-cnowledge and to put him on the track of more de- 

 tailed information if he required it. The volumes 

 before us unfortunately cannot claim any such position ; 

 indeed, as a work of general reference they are almost 

 useless. A series of text-books by different writers on 

 different subjects does not make a comprehensive 

 treatise because these text-books are bound between 

 the same covers and " not sold separately. " No serious 

 effort seems to have been made to coordinate the 

 material properly, and, in fact, almost the only attempt 

 at uniformity which can be discovered is in the direction 

 of print and paper. .'K single quotation from the pre- 

 face is enough in itself to support this contention; 

 the editor there says, " rises of temperature are 

 given sometimes in degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes 

 NO. 1815, VOL. 70] 



in degrees Centigrade; dimensions of machines 

 occasionally in feet and inches but more often in centi- 

 metres ; magnetic flux density in lines per square inch 

 in one article, and in lines per square centimetre in 

 another." We can see no way in which to regard this 

 paragraph other than as a confession of careless edit- 

 ing, as we should have thought the very first thing 

 the editor would do would be to adopt a uniform system 

 of units and notation throughout. Other instances of 

 more serious carelessness might be quoted, but we 

 will content ourselves by giving one example. In the 

 three volumes already published we have come across 

 two tables giving the relative conductivities and 

 temperature coefficients of various substances; in one 

 the values of the resistivities are given, in the 

 other the relative conductivities. A very cursory ex- 

 amination shows that the two tables do not agree, 

 and if they are compared more carefully we get results 

 of which the following are specimens (the conductivity 

 of iron being taken as the standard for comparing 

 the two tables) : — 



Relative conductivity of iron Table I. l6'2 Table II. i6'2 



.. !> copper ,, 97-5 ,, 90&92 



,, ,, mercury ,, I '65 ,, I '56 



,, ,, platinum ,, 190 ,, 134 



,, ,, aluminium,, 52 ,, 55 



The agreement between the temperature coefficients, 

 is equally bad. We have purposely only compared 

 above the figures for elementary substances, as those 

 for alloys such as German silver, manganin, &c.,. 

 which are in even worse disagreement, are valueless, 

 in one table as the percentage composition is not 

 given. Comment on figures of this sort is needless. 



Enough has probably been said to show that as a 

 standard treatise on electrical engineering the value 

 of these volumes is little or nothing. This is the more 

 to be regretted as they have been produced in a style 

 which may be described as lavish, and several of the 

 contributors are in the front ranks of the profession, 

 able to write with an authority on their particular 

 subjects which cannot be called in question. It would 

 not have required very much more trouble and care 

 to have converted the publication into a first-class 

 addition to the electrical engineer's library instead of 

 leaving it as a book only to be valued on account of 

 the occasional articles of exceptional merit w-hich it 

 contains. Space would not permit us to review these 

 in detail here even were it profitable to do so. Suffice 

 it to say that there are several contributions which 

 thoroughly deserve to be read, some because of the 

 admirable way in which they treat their subject- 

 matter, and others because, in addition, they are 

 practically the only existing English te.xt-books on the 

 subject. On the whole, however, we think the level is 

 not very high, especially if scientific treatment be 

 looked for ; there is a general tendency for too much 

 description, too much of an account of what the 

 practical engineer has made, and too little of the 

 theoretical principles on which his practice is based. 

 It is evident, of course, that the book does not aim at 

 discussing the theoretical side of electricity and 

 magnetism, but even " modern practice " must be 

 studied, if it is to be properly studied, with a certain 



