: 
May 9, 1912] 
NATURE 
a) 
accounted for. From this point of view the 
“Weende” method (Henneberg and Stohmann) of 
estimating “crude fibre”’ or “Rohfaser”’ has no 
place as a “cellulose” method. 
Nevertheless, it is fully described, as is 
Dmochowski’s modification (Diss, Géttingen, 
1909), which consists in digesting these residues 
with nitric acid at 80°, and further purifying from 
soluble products, the final residue duly weighed | 
being converted into cellulose by applying the | 
correcting factor 1°1. These methods are not with- 
out interest for what they are, that is, as crude 
measures of resistance to hydrolysis and oxidation. 
But they should be assigned a corresponding posi- 
tion as representing the empirical or conventional, 
and of small utility in systematic research. 
On the other hand, the author givés full value 
to the investigations of M. Renker, and of the 
International Commission. But it might have 
been pointed out that the formal endorsement of 
the chlorination method follows many years after 
its general adoption by specialists. 
In other special sections the absence of critical 
effort on the author’s part, and therefore of co- 
ordinated selection of matter, imposes a consider- 
able strain upon the reader in assigning the proper 
values to the records of experimental work. Thus, 
in reviewing the various contributions to the 
“Constitution of the Lignocelluloses’’ (pp. 538- 
554), the views of Klason and Czapek, which are 
not without suggestiveness but demonstrably un- 
tenable, are reproduced at length. The classifica- 
tion of Fremy, long since rejected, finds a place. 
As a conspicuous omission from this section, 
the author has overlooked the suggestive re- 
searches of W. J. Russell on the autoxidation of 
the lignocelluloses, and the action of wood surfaces 
on photographic plates (in absence of light). 
In describing the cereal straws it is implied that 
they are lignocelluloses. But a straw is a hetero- 
geneous assemblage of tissues, fibres and cells, 
and cannot be treated on the same plan as a homo- 
geneous tissue, such as jute bast. 
We mention this as an instance of the difficulty 
of treating ‘cellulose ’’ as a matter of chemistry 
only, and disregarding structural essentials. 
We revert to our more general criticism, which 
we make in the interest of progress. To attract 
the young workers, it appears to us a first duty of | 
teachers to aim at didactic directness, even if 
sometimes at the expense of comprehensive exacti- 
tude. The author has, we think, inverted this 
order of ideas in defining his task and duty. 
Hence a volume of very great value as a full 
record, not merely of the living, but of the mori- 
bund, and even stillborn; moreover, a very sub- 
bility, and, may we say, modesty ; a volume: in- 
valuable to the specialist, but to the young student 
invaluable in the other sense, that is, he will not 
know how to value it. The author, we hope, may 
| use this exhaustive compilation of records in pro- 
ducing a text-book based on a vital and vitalising 
ground plan, that is, designed to mould the student 
mind, equipping it with a critical basis for research 
work in a field which is one of the most attractive 
and least exhausted of any branch of natural 
history. 
AN ASTRONOMICAL POET. 
Manili Astronomicon Liber II. Edidit H. W. 
Garrod. Pp. xcix+166. (Oxonii: E Typo- 
grapheo Academico, 1911.) Price 10s. 6d. net. 
R. GARROD has by this volume deserved 
the gratitude of every student of astrology, 
and in a less degree of every student of ancient 
astronomy, which is constantly illustrated by 
astrology. If the book which he has edited is of 
small value for the history of astronomical science, 
it is entitled to a high place in astronomical poetry, 
and Manilius’s imagination may appeal to many 
who have no independent interest either in astro- 
logy or in the history of astronomy. As Mr. 
Garrod points out in his preface, the second book 
of Manilius is at once the longest and the most 
difficult. It requires close attention to geometrical 
ideas of no value to modern science, and these 
ideas are made the more difficult through being 
expressed in verse, and in a verse teeming with 
poetic metaphor, instead of in prose. “And not 
only is the second book hard, but the commen- 
taries upon it are hard too. No one commentary 
suffices,” says Mr. Garrod. This criticism might 
now be moré appropriately expressed in the past 
tense. The Latin text of the second book is hard, 
though Mr. Garrod’s painstaking study of the text 
has done much to make it easier, but there is no 
difficulty in following it with the aid of the trans- 
lation and commentary that Mr. Garrod has sup- 
plied. In fact, the translation might be read with 
interest by one who has forgotten his Latin. 
Mr. Garrod has brought to his work a rare 
combination of qualities. This is not the place, 
nor am I the person, to do justice to his gifts or 
achievements in the department of textual criti- 
cism, though it is here that the chief value of his 
work probably lies, and it is certainly this part 
of his work that will attract most attention from 
other scholars. Questions of grammar and prosody 
arise less often, but Mr. Garrod is a master of all 
these. He has, moreover, what is rare in these 
days, a taste for astrology, and, what is happily 
stantial evidence of the author’s industry and capa- 1 less rare, a genuine poetic feeling, which shows 
NO. 2219, VOL. 89] 
