NATURE 



[June i, 1905 



fore us. Mr. Andrews's book on " Electrical Control " 

 is a descriptive treatise on switch-gear. It possesses 

 the same disadvantages as " Modern Electric Prac- 

 tice " ; one cannot learn electrical practice from a book ; 

 there is only one school — the practical school — in which 

 one can learn the principles and details of construction 

 of apparatus in one-tenth of the time and ten times as 

 thoroughly as by means of written descriptions. Prac- 

 tical men are apt to complain that text-books are value- 

 less, as they are written by theorists; we have read a 

 great many text-books of late written by practical men, 

 and have come to the conclusion that it is only the 

 theorist who should write them. He can describe the 

 underlying principles which persist when the fashion 

 of their application alters ; the practical man describes 

 the methods of his practice which even as he writes 

 become antiquated. 



We have reserved to the last the two volumes which 

 head our list. Messrs. Poinqari^ and Vreeland's book de- 

 serves a place in any electrical library on account of its 

 remarkablv simple and lucid explanation of Maxwell's 

 theory and of the work of Hertz, Lodge, and others 

 which led to the development of Hertzian telegraphy. 

 This is from the pen of M. Poincar^, translated by Mr. 

 Vreeland, and forms the first part of the book. The 

 second part, written by Mr. Vreeland, deals with the 

 problems presented by the practice of wireless tele- 

 graphy, and the writer, by wisely confining himself to 

 principles rather than details, has succeeded in writing 

 a worthy sequel to M. Poincar^'s work. 



Mr. Russell's book is the first volume of a mathe- 

 matical treatise on alternating currents. Alternating 

 current machinery is growing so steadily in import- 

 ance, and the mathematical theory in connection with 

 it is so complex, that there is plenty of room for a 

 thorough and comprehensive work of this kind. The 

 present volume deals with the general theorems, and 

 the second will be devoted to the more specific theory 

 of alternating current machines and the transmission 

 of power. Maurice Solomon. 



OVR BOOK SHELF. 

 Vegetationsbilder. Edited by Dr. G. Karsten and H. 



Schenck. Second series. Parts i. — viii. (Jena : 



Gustav Fischer, 1904.) 

 The first series of the " Vegetationsbilder "' met with 

 well-merited success, and a second series has been 

 appearing at intervals during the past year. Of the 

 contributors to the first series, Drs. G. Karsten and E. 

 Stahl have again supplied material, the former taking 

 up a never-failing source of interest in the mangrove 

 vegetation, whilst Dr. Stahl, in a double part, deals 

 with the -xerophytes and conifers of Mexico; amongst 

 the latter the primeval Taxodium trees growing in 

 the park of Chapultepec and the sombre cypresses on 

 the road to the sacred mount of Amecameca bear the 

 impress of historic antiquity. Another number, con- 

 sisting of parts V. to vii., is devoted to the representation 

 of mid-European forest trees, in accordance with an 

 expressed desire for subjects taken from native sources. 

 The photographs taken by Dr. L. Klein include typical 

 specimens of conifers and beeches in the Schwarzwald 

 and Switzerland, and others showing the changes 

 wrought by browsing animals and devastating winds ; 

 many of them are excellent, notably a scene of wind- 

 blown pines which have been entirely cleared of 

 NO. 1857, VOL. 72] 



branches except to leeward, but similar subjects are 

 accessible to most botanists, and for this reason they 

 do not possess the interest attaching to photographs 

 from less accessible countries. The names of several 

 new contributors are announced, among them Mr. E. 

 Ule, whose character sketches of epiphytes in the 

 .Amazon region of Peru appear in the first part of this 

 series. Of the Cactacea, which are widely spread 

 through South .America, a number of genera include 

 epiphytic species, and in this region Cereus is pre- 

 dominant. Cereus megalanthiis, a species which 

 might be called a climbing epiphyte, is shown perched 

 on a Ficus tree. .Another curious condition is that of a 

 flourishing bromeliad, Streptocalyx angustifoUi(S, 

 where, according to the writer, the exuberance of vege- 

 tation is so directly traceable to ants that he compares 

 the phenomenon with the fungus gardens described a 

 few years ago by Dr. A. Moeller. The last part of the 

 series contains photographs taken in the Italian 

 colon}' of Eritraea by Dr. Schweinfurth. Hyphaene 

 thebaica, the doum palm, familiar on account of its 

 branching habit, the svcomore fig, and an arboreous 

 Euphorbia are among the characteristic specimens 

 chosen to illustrate different regions in the country. 



Author and Printer. An Attempt to Codify the best 

 Typographical Practices of the Present Day. By 

 F. Howard Collins. Pp. xv-l-408. (London : 

 Henry Frowde, 1905.) Price 5^. net. 

 The want of uniformity of spelling, capitalisation, 

 punctuation, and use of italic type causes continual 

 trouble to all who are responsible for the editorial 

 supervision of scientific literature in any form. Some 

 authors are more German than the Germans in their 

 use of capitals, while others underline their manu- 

 scripts as freely as ladies do their correspondence. It 

 is frequently diflicult to decide questions of ortho- 

 graphy, and to reduce individual practice to the con- 

 sistent stj'le, which is desirable in the columns of a 

 periodical, but is not always maintained. Mr. 

 Collins has prepared his book to help in this end, as 

 a standard guide for " Authors, Editors, Printers, 

 Correctors of the Press, Compositors, and Typists." 

 The volume contains more than twenty thousand 

 separate entries of words arranged alphabetically. 

 Included among these are abbreviations, disputed 

 spellings, foreign words and phrases, divisions of 

 words, and various rules and explanations which 

 should prove of service to authors and editors. The 

 proofs of the work have been read by many writers 

 and others who can give authoritative opinions as to 

 what is correct or customary, so that the book does 

 not contain merely Mr. Collins's decisions, but a con- 

 sensus of opinion edited by him. 



Highways and Byways in Derbyshire. By J. B. 



Firth. With illustrations by Nelly Erichsen. 



(London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd.) Price 6s. 

 With this book as a guide, a tourist could spend 

 many pleasant weeks in Derbyshire, and he would 

 learn that every part of the county has literary and 

 historical associations of great interest. But while the 

 human side is so well represented, little notice is taken 

 of nature, except from the aesthetic point of view. 

 " Of natural history and geology," says the author, 

 " there is frankly nothing in this book, of science 

 nothing, of sport nothing." 



Notwithstanding this confession of what we may be 

 permitted to describe as sins of omission, notes and 

 descriptions of places in which scientific readers are 

 particularly interested occur here and there. For 

 instance, a short account is given of the stone circle 

 of .Arborlow, the Stonehenge of the Midlands. The 

 monument consists of a circular enclosure in which 

 are a number of blocks of limestone, all lying flat on 



