NATURE 



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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1910. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ATLASES. 

 Library of Congress. ,4 list of Geographical .Atlases 

 ill tin' Library of Congress, with Bibliographical 

 Sotes. Compiled under the direction of Philip Lee 

 Phillips. Vol. i., .Atlases. Pp. xiii+1208. Vol ii., 

 .\uthor List; Index. Pp. 1209-1659. (Washington: 

 Government Printing Office, 1909.) Price 2.35 

 dollars the two vols. 



T"" HOUGH making no claim to be a complete list of 

 ^ atlases, this work marks a very important step 

 towards a much-needed annotated bibliography of such 

 publications, nothing on a similar scale having ever 

 been attempted before. The collection dealt with is 

 important enough to represent a large proportion of 

 the whole material in existence, and the information 

 supplied, both in the form of general notes and of 

 complete lists of the maps contained in the more 

 important atlas, will be of great value to students. 

 These lists are of particular service in the case of 

 early works, often found incomplete or broken up into 

 their constituent items, but of great interest from the 

 point of view of the history of geography. 



In such early works the present collection is com- 

 paratively rich. The set of editions of Ptolemy's 

 "Geography," so valuable as presenting a view of 

 the progress of knowledge, on the academic side at 

 least, during the century and more following the 

 discovery of .America, makes a near approach to 

 completeness. Ortelius is well represented, and in a 

 somewhat less degree, Mercator, though there is no 

 copy of the great Italian atlas of Lafreri, somewhat 

 earlier in date. Nor do we find the Speculum nauticum 

 of Waghenaer, the earliest example of a purely hydro- 

 graphical atlas, though we meet with Dudley's 

 ■■.\rcano del Mare," and many later works of a similar 

 kind. .Most of the best mudern atlases are, of course, 

 included. .As might be expected, works .American, 

 either in origin or subject-matter, decidedly pre- 

 dominate, the items under " United States " number- 

 ing about two-fifths of the whole. 



Valuable as the catalogue certainly is, and great 

 as has evidently been the labour expended upon it, it 

 could hardly be that imperfections should not be 

 noticeable in matters of detail. The entire absence of 

 headlines giving an indication of the broad subdivi- 

 sions of the subject is a drawback, as is also the 

 reference in the index, not to the pages of the work, 

 but to the numbers of the main entries, placed 

 as these are in no very conspicuous posi- 

 tion, and never repeated when an entry 

 covers several pages. The general arrangement 

 is somewhat illogical, special subject headings 

 always preceding general ones, though special topo- 

 graphical headings again follow the latter. In the 

 notes the vague references to authorities are irritating 

 (e.g. " cf . Nordenskiold," after a quotation from that 

 author). There seems no ^very consistent plan as re- 

 gards the choice of atlases for analysis ; thus there is 

 no full list of the maps in Nordenskiold's " Facsimile 

 NO. 2133, VOL. 84] 



.Atlas," though, curiously enough, some of the maps 

 find a place in the index, when borrowed by other 

 authors. It is certainly useful to find all the pub- 

 lishers of atlases grouped under "Publishers" in the 

 index, but this hardly justifies the omission of the 

 individual names from their proper places. 



Universal knowledge cannot, of course, be expected 

 from the best of editors, but further expert assistance 

 might have saved some errors, these being sometimes 

 due to th° unquestioning acceptance of statements by 

 earlier writers. Thus the fifteenth-century editor of 

 Ptolemy, Dom Nicolaus Germanus, still appears as 

 " Donis." The statement that the 1598 Italian ver- 

 sion of Ptolemy was due to Cernoti is correct only in 

 regard to the new matter added by Magini. The famous 

 fifteenth-century map of Nicolas de Cusa is ascribed to 

 Nicolas "Cusana," and, stranger still, the sixteenth- 

 century humanist, Loriti, or " Glareanus " (so named 

 from Glarus, in Switzerland), appears as " H. Loritz 

 de Gloria." 



But these are, after all, small matters to be set 

 against the undoubted value of the catalogue, both for 

 purposes of reference and as a step towards a still 

 more complete list of atlases which we may hope to 

 see published some day. 



LEAD AND ZINC PIGMENTS. 

 Lcail and Zinc Figments. By Dr. C. D. HoUey. Pp. 

 xix + 340. (New York: John Wiley and Sons; 

 London : Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1909.) Price 

 I2S. 6d. net. 



OWING to various causes, the development of the 

 paint industry in the L'nited .States has been of 

 a very special and interesting character. On the one 

 hand there has been a large demand for ready-mixed 

 paints for the protection of the wooden buildings which 

 are still so common in that country, and on the other 

 the existence of large deposits of zinc lead ores 

 has led to the preparation of sublimed whites, which 

 are largely used in the making-up of ready-mixed 

 paints. In addition, there is the tendency, which we 

 find in all industries in .America, to replace hand by 

 machine methods, and thus develop new and modified 

 processes. .A book, therefore, on the manufacture of 

 lead and zinc pigments, written by one so thoroughly 

 familiar with all the processes as Dr. Holley, is of 

 great interest to English readers. 



In the first place, a detailed description will be found 

 of the mechanical processes of white-lead manufacture 

 which have been so successful in the l'nited States, 

 although they never seem to have succeeded in re- 

 placing the ordinary Dutch process in this country. 

 Detailed descriptions of the Carter process, the 

 Matheson process, and others will be found, evi- 

 dently written by one w-ho is thoroughly familiar 

 with them, while the photographs of actual plant are 

 of great interest. In addition, the preparation of sub- 

 limed lead'pigments, which has become of such great 

 importance in the United States, although used to a 

 comparatively small extent in this country, including 

 sublimed white and sublimed blue lead, the preparation 

 of zinc oxide, and the preparation of the mixed lead 



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