i84 



NA TURE 



[December 17, ii 



THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF IXDI.i. 

 The Commercial Products of India, being an 

 abridgment of " The Dictionary of the Economic 

 Products of India." By Sir George Watt. Pub- 

 lished under the authority of H.M. Secretary of 

 State for India in Council. Pp. viii-l-iiSg. 

 (London : John Murray, 1908.) Price 16s. net. 



IT is now almost a quarter of a century since the 

 publication of Dr. (now Sir George) Watt's " Dic- 

 tionary of the Economic Products of India " was com- 

 menced. That monumental work is now out of print, 

 and the necessity for the issue of a new and revised 

 edition has been evident for some time. The re- 

 issue of the complete Dictionary, howev-er, is likely 

 to be postponed for a good few years, so all the more 

 do we welcome meanwhile the appearance of the 

 present work, and we congratulate Sir George Watt 

 on the completion of his three years' task. 



As its subtitle indicates, the book is practically an 

 abridgment of the Dictionary, published under the 

 authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India 

 in Council, and written mainly by Sir George Watt 

 under the direction of a supervisory committee ap- 

 pointed by the Secretary of State. The scope of the 

 work was to be " confined to products which are of 

 present or prospective industrial or economic import- 

 ance," and, on the whole, it has kept fairly well to 

 those limits. The Dictionary consists of si.x volumes 

 with a total of more than five thousand pages, while 

 the present abridgment is in one volume of a little more 

 than a thousand pages, well printed, and well got up. 

 There is, of course, room for difference of opinion 

 as to the importance or otherwise of some of the 

 products discussed in the abridgment, but, in the 

 main, excellent discrimination has been shown in 

 tlieir selection, for which, however, we understand 

 the author is not responsible. 



The articles themselves are modelled on the familiar 

 lines of the Dictionary, and offer evidence of great 

 industry in the consultation and quotation of all pos- 

 sible references, although with regard to the latter a 

 stricter system of selection would have reduced the 

 bulk without detracting from the value of the book. 

 Uniformity of treatment of the heterogeneous items 

 constituting a work of this kind is not, of course, 

 feasible even if it were desirable, but this cannot be 

 held entirely to excuse the uneven quality of the 

 abridgment. Some of the articles give fairlv succinct, 

 business-like accounts of their respective subjects, as, 

 for instance (amongst the longer articles), those on 

 india-rubber or flax, and (amongst the shorter ones) 

 those on Calotropis gigantea, Dioscorea, or Ptero- 

 carpus. Others, again, are unnecessarily spun out 

 by failure to discriminate between essential and super- 

 lluous information and between proved facts and 

 mere opinions not worth recording. The following 

 examples illustrate this defect. 



in the article on tea the historical part is padded 

 with statements such as : — 



" We read that Wang Meng, father-in-law of the 

 Empercir in the middle of the fourth centurv was 

 fond of drinking tea, and set it before his friends, but 

 NO. 2042, VOL. 79] 



they found it too bitter, and generally declined, feign- 

 ing indisposition." 



Under Aconis Calamus, which, by the way, is 

 scarcely an important product, we are informed that 

 " Dr. Childe, second physician to the Sir Jamsetji 

 Jijibhai Hospital, Bombay, tried an authentic tinc- 

 ture for malaria, dyspepsia, dysentery, and chronic 

 bronchitis, and after careful experiment pronounced 

 it inert." Again, in the article on Rhea, prominence 

 is given to the fascinating effect on the author of the 

 undying faith of a very old lady in the ultimate 

 success of that distinctly doubtful crop. 



We admit the difficulty of abridging a de- 

 scription in which one has also to incorporate 

 the most recently- acquired knowledge, but this 

 difficulty should not necessitate the actual expan- 

 sion of a dictionary article. Yet several of the articles 

 in the abridgment are actually longer than the corre- 

 sponding ones in the Dictionary. Thus in the Dic- 

 tionary fifteen pages are devoted to Boehmeria nivea, 

 and fourteen to Camellia thcifcra, while in the 

 abridgment the number of pages are respectivelv 

 sixteen and thirty-five. 



We mention these defects from the point of view of 

 one who hopes to have frequent occasion to consult 

 the work, but dislikes the trouble of sifting the gold 

 from the dross. Despite those blemishes, however, 

 which we trust a more rigorous application of the blue 

 pencil will cause to disappear in the next edition, 

 there can be no question of the great value of Sir 

 George Watt's book. He has laid a fresh debt of 

 gratitude on all interested in India or its products 

 by performing a work that very few but himself 

 would have had the interest, industry, and patience 

 necessary to accomplish. .-\. T. Gage. 



THE PHYSICS OF EARTHQUAKES. 

 The Physics of Earthquake Phenomena. By Dr. 

 ■ C. G. Knott. Pp. xii + 283. (Oxford: Clarendon 

 Press, 1908.) Price 14s. net. 



E.'^RTHOU.AKES, once regarded as portents and 

 warnings to mankind, have become an object 

 of human curiosity, and now form a branch of know- 

 ledge of which the principal external relations are 

 threefold. They are of interest to the physicist, and 

 their interpretation demands the application of the 

 knowledge he has won ; they interest the geologist 

 as an explanation of, and as explained by, his ob- 

 servations of the structure of the earth ; and they 

 interest the man of commerce or affairs by their effect 

 on man and on commerce and industry. With these 

 varied outlooks it seems almost impossible that any 

 one man should write a satisfactory handbook of 

 seismology, and recent attempts leave much to be 

 desired in their incomplete or inaccurate treatment 

 of one or more branches of the science. Dr. Knott 

 has confined himself to the physics of earthquakes, a 

 department of their studv with which he is well quali- 

 fied to deal, and of which, more than of any other, 

 an adequate text-book was required. 



To a large extent the book deals with matters con- 

 tained in other manuals, the treatment differing only 



