124 



NATURE 



\yune 9, 



savage, cannibal though he be." We cannot inure our- 

 selves to salt at too early an age ; we ought indeed to 

 pickle our babies : "To rub new-born infants with salt'' 

 is a practice "in every respect cleanly" and "strictly 

 conducive to health." 



Mr. Boddy has evidently spent much pains on his 

 history : but, as he confesses, in trying to begin at the 

 beginning he has laboured under many difficulties. He 

 has traced the history of salt from the time of Moses and 

 Job by the aid of such written records as he has been 

 able to meet with, but on the question of its history before 

 their time he is obliged to fall back on his inner 

 consciousness. 



"The origin of salt is one of those enigmas of nature 

 which as yet has completely frustrated the most accom- 

 plished and scientific geologists, and no suggestion has 

 yet been made which will satisfactorily and conclusively 

 account for its formation ; for whatever hypothesis has 

 been stated there is sure to be an objection so difficult to 

 overcome that the author has been fain to admit that it 

 is thoroughly impracticable, and therefore inadmissible." 



Even our author is fain to express himself guardedly 

 on this point — 



"If we take srU as a whole, leaving out of the question 

 altogether the different conditions in which it is found, 

 and with no reference at all to its e.xisting either in the 

 earth, above the earth, in lakes, or in the sea, but looking 

 at it simply as it is, a mass of rock, or a volume of water 

 holding it in solution, it inclines one to the belief that it 

 possesses a dual inchoafion, though the original source of 

 both may have been connate; but owing to extraneous 

 causes which were brought to bear, one branch became 

 crystallised rock-salt, while the other, through imma- 

 turity, remains in a state of solution." 



"Why the sea is salt" has given rise to many pretty 

 fables: Mr. Boddy invents still another fable; but it is 

 not at all pretty: it is that "sea-water is the result of 

 some subterranean communication with reservoirs of salt 

 through the media of volcanic foci " (p. 53). This per- 

 haps hardly does justice to Mr. Boddy's powers of narra. 

 live : the picture of the saltless world proves that he can 

 do better ; and yet even this is surpassed by that of the 

 insect world of Cheshire on a rainy day (p. 60). But it 

 is scarcely fair in the interests of the book itself to quote 

 all its best things, even if our space and the reader's 

 patience were longer. 



Mr. Boddy is apprehensive of the reviewers : " An un- 

 known author is placed at a great disadvantage and at the 

 mercy of those who may laud a book to the skies if they 

 please, satirically criticise another, and pass over a third 

 with a sarcastic ^mile or a significant shrug of the shoul- 

 ders. I am afraid that my little volume will unfortunately 

 be found among the latter, but I candidly acknowledge 

 that I hope it will be regarded as belonging to the first, or 

 at least the second." 



Our theory of the origin of this book differs somewhat 

 from that of its author, as given above; Mr. Boddy's 

 father (to whom the book is dedicated) was, we are in- 

 formed, a ship's surgeon ; and it occurs to us that this 

 book is the result of the molecular motion of a brain 

 which can trace its ancestry to a prolonged regimen of 

 salt junk and pic' led pork. It is the most striking in- 

 stance of heredity we have yet met with, and despite our 

 ear that Mr. I ;oddy may describe our notion as " a brazen 

 assertion and a subtle paralogism," we commend it to the 

 notice of Mr. Francis Galton. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Text-Book of Practical Organic Chemistry for Elemen- 

 tary Students. By H. Chapman Jones. 100 pp. 

 (London : Joseph Hughes, 1881.) 

 Most teachers of organic chemistry have felt that if their 

 students could be made to work through a fairly simple 

 series of typical experiments the work of learning would 

 be rendered easier, and the knowledge gained would be 

 made more definite and more real. Just such a series of 

 experiments is described in this little work by Mr. Chap- 

 man Jones. The experiments are well chosen and clearly 

 described ; no costly apparatus is required, yet the student 

 who works carefully through the book will certainly have 

 laid a solid basis of knowledge of organic chemistry on 

 which he may build a satisfactory structure. 



An outline of methods whereby organic acids may be 

 detected is given towards the end of the book, but the 

 main part is devoted to experiments illustrative of frac- 

 tional distillation and precipitation, formauons and gene- 

 ral properties of leading hydrocarbons, alcohols, and 

 acids, etherification, &c. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

 [ The Editor does >7ot hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 hy his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, refected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonytnous communications. 

 [ The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible othenvise to ensure the appearance even 

 of communications coiitaining interesting and novel facts.'\ 



Trevandrum Observatory 



As I was reading in a recent issue of your valuable journal 

 (v)l. xxiii. p. 482) a letter on the magnetic storm of August, 

 1S80, showing the universality and simultaneity of the disturb- 

 ance by comparing the observations at Greenwich, Toronto, 

 Zi-ka-Wei, and Melbourne, I felt curious to know whether any 

 such disturbance was noted here in the Government Observatory, 

 and if s 1, whether the time corresponded with that given in your 

 paper. On my application the gentleman in charge of the 

 Observatory put into my hands, the inclosed abstract for the 

 whole month of Au.;ust, which I herewith fonvard to you. It 

 CO tains, as you will see, not only the magnetic observations 

 with the unifilar, bifilar and balance, but also the meteorological 

 data f jr the necessary correction, &c. The reference throughout 

 the paper is to the local time, which miy be easily reduced to 

 the Greenwich time, as the longitude is given. The observa- 

 tions, I may add, are quite reliable, though made by native 

 agency, and I hope may prove useful on this occasion. But the 

 paper inclosed I fear is too long to find room in your crowded 

 columns, and what I beg you to do is to place it at the disposal 

 of any of your scientific contributors or friends who take an 

 interest in the question of terrestrial magnetism, and may be 

 therefore expected to make use of the maierial here furnished. 



A word more before I close. Your readers might know this 

 observatory, said to be situated near the magnetic equator, was 

 once in a very flourishing condition under the direction of Mi. 

 John Allan Broun. On his retirement to Europe the establishment 

 was reduced and a limited series of observations introduced, 

 which he continued to direct till his recent demise. Since then 

 the obs rvations recorded are lying unused for the want of a 

 scientific chief. If any scientific gentleman or society should 

 generously offer some help in the way of directing the labours of 

 tliis institution, I venture to think that the Government would 

 gladly avail itself of such help, and the cause of science could 

 then be materially promoted. P. Soondrem Pillay 



H. H. the Maharajah's College, Trevandrum, Trevancore, 

 South India, May 6 



Symbolical Logic 

 Fresh criti'-ism of my logical writings in a work just pub- 

 lished ("Symbolic Logic," by John Venn, M. A., Fellow and 

 Lecturer in the Moral Sciences, Gonville and Caius College, 

 Cambridge) must be my excuse for troubling the editor and 

 eaders of Nature with a third letter on the above subject. 



