Se a 

Fd 
JUNE 23, 1923] 
NATURE 
835 

recommendation itself is well founded and, given 
teachers capable of an adequate conception of the 
meaning of art, whose esthetic faculties have been 
adequately cultivated, nothing but good can result 
from its adoption, but circumspection is needed ; art, 
like religion, is caught rather than learned. 
Tn the February number of the United States publica- 
tion School Life appears a somewhat detailed descrip- 
tion of a type of school organisation adopted by certain 
“progressive ” city school boards, notably in Detroit, 
Pittsburgh, and Akron, with the object of providing the 
varied curriculum and instruction by specialist teachers 
now generally demanded, while keeping expenses within 
reasonable bounds. The pupils spend half of each day 
in ordinary class-rooms or “ home-rooms,” where they 
are taught formal subjects—reading, writing, -arith- 
metic, formal language, hygiene, and history—and the 
other half in special rooms or laboratories where they 
are taught by specialist teachers of science, art, music, 
literature, manual training or shop work, domestic 
science, etc. One of these rooms called the auditorium 
is devoted to co-ordinating all other work by dramatisa- 
tions and other modes of expression, vocational guid- 
ance, and various devices for preparing pupils “ for 
more complete living and the self-control and self- 
direction needed therefor.” These “ platoon” or 
“ work-study-play ”’ schools use all their rooms all 
the time, each of the teachers in the “‘ home-rooms ” 
having the care of two groups of pupils, one in each 
half of the day. Equipment is minimised and the 
cost of supplies lessened. Supervision is easier because 
fewer teachers are responsible for results in any 
one subject. “‘ Properly directed, the platoon school 
epitomises socialised education.” 

Technology of Fuels. 
American Fuels. By Dr. Raymond Foss Bacon and 
William Allen Hamor. (Mellon Institute Techno- 
chemical Series.) In 2 vols. Vol. 1. Pp. ix+628, 
Vol. 2. Pp. vi + 629-1257. (New York and 
London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1922.) 60s. 
N the preface of this work the authors or editors, 
one of whom is a consulting chemical engineer 
of New York and formerly a director of the Mellon 
Institute, and the other the assistant director of that 
Institute, state that “ they have attempted to condense 
into a series of specially prepared chapters the fruits 
of the experience of specialists, thereby placing in the 
hands of manufacturers, engineers, and chemists a 
composite book representing authoritative accounts of 
the fuels now regarded as technically important in the 
United States.” 
_ The immediate responsibility of the two authors is 
NO. 2799, VOL. 111] 
therefore limited, since other names are attached to 
most of the twenty-six chapters into which the work is 
divided. Most of these names guarantee a first-hand 
knowledge of the subject treated, and the editors 
“hope that the treatise will be found to give informa- 
tive summaries of sound practice and the practical 
details which are generally not to be found in the 
literature.”” This method of treatment has both 
advantages and disadvantages. The book abounds 
with detailed information on all sorts of subjects con- 
nected with the treatment of fuel, and of apparatus 
designed for its utilisation, information of a quantity 
and quality which it would have been exceedingly 
difficult, if not impossible, for any one or two authors 
to provide. At the same time the number of subjects 
and appliances treated is so great, and their detailed 
consideration covers so much ground, that it has been 
impossible for the editors to maintain any attitude of 
appraisement or to reconcile what may be regarded 
as conflicting claims. To have done so would have 
been a very awkward task and would haye lengthened 
the book unduly, although it must be remembered that, 
in consulting it for the purpose of making a selection of 
a process or apparatus, the reader will be called upon to 
do this for himself. 
The editors say ‘“‘ some of the chapters have been 
written from the viewpoint of men who are enthusi- 
astic advocates of the particular fuels treated,’ and 
reading the book will undoubtedly lead a discriminat- 
ing reader to the same conclusion. The treatment 
awarded to some of the processes and appliances is 
such as one would expect to find in the correspondence 
of a well-informed agent, or in an intelligently pre- 
pared catalogue, and its appearance in a book of this 
kind is unusual. This is not said in a spirit of con- 
demnation, but is intended to convey a warning, which ~ 
may be necessary, to a reader who consults it in any 
expectation of finding the judicial statements on pro- 
cesses and plant to which we have become accustomed 
in the best of our technical literature. 
Approached in the proper spirit, the book is un- 
doubtedly one which can be made of very great service 
to everybody concerned with its subject-matter. There 
is, however, an aspect of this work to which some 
exception may be taken by those who look for well- 
balanced international treatment in scientific and 
technological writing. To some extent criticism from 
this point of view is disarmed by the title, but although 
fuels may be American, the technology of fuel is inter- 
national and the scientific basis of that technology even 
more so. The authors cannot, however, be said to 
be very deeply imbued with this principle. The reader 
| will reap some advantage from the process of selection . 
which has taken place, inasmuch as this work will 
