298 



NATURE 



[Feb. 19, 1874 



Dr. Foster will be successful in attracting other advanced 

 mathematicians to the study of his subject ; and better 

 still, that he will be able to persuade those who are in the 

 beginning of their undergraduate mathematical educa- 

 tion to devote some of their spare time — quite a recreation 

 as it would be — to learning the first principles and the 

 methods of physiological research, under his able super- 

 vision. 



Truly Dr. Foster and Dr. Clerk-Maxwell have a noble 

 work before them, and we may hope that by their ex- 

 ample and precept Cambridge may after a lapse of thirty 

 or forty years, in the matter of physical and physiological 

 research, be on a level with a second-rate German Univer- 

 sity. 



ATHENIAN TEXT-BOOKS OF SCIENCE 



EyX^tpiStov rqs Xrififias, Kara rat veararas T?jr enicrTrjfirjs 

 TTpooSovs. (Ytto Ai/aoT. K XprjtTTOfiamv. Ex h6r^vm,i. 

 187I.) 



'E-mtmjfioi'i.Ka UapaSo^a. (Ytto A. 2. 2Tpou/iTros-. . . . A^;;w)o-t, 

 1864.) 



Hepi Afpor koi tu>v Evepyeiav Avtov. (Ytto A. 2. ^rpovpLwos, 

 1869.) 



Ilfpi rtDV Tvaicrfav Kai Tav Ao^aa-iav tcov re dp)^aiav km rcov 

 vfutrepwv as irpos ra (jivmKa (jimvopfpa (v y€vei, Kai toiv 

 fieBoSav Tov epfvvav avra. (Ytto A. 2. STpoujajrof, 1 85 8.) 



THE University of Athens has existed for no more 

 than thirty-seven years. Two of its four Faculties, 

 — the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Philosophy, 

 require a knowledge of natural philosophy and chemistry. 

 It is difficult to understand how these subjects could have 

 been taught at first, for the students by no means often 

 understand French, and no Greek books on science then 

 existed. No doubt the professors taught as Plato and 

 Aristotle taught ; and the note-book of the student had 

 to be his text-book. But matters have changed since 

 then : the demand for text-books in Greek has caused 

 them to appear ; slowly indeed, for we have seen but few 

 books on science, but we may hope that the original text- 

 books which are now beginning to appear are the first of 

 a continuous series. Do not let it be imagined that the 

 works whose titles are given above are the only works on 

 science we could find in all Athens. There is a big book 

 on Physics by M. Damaskenos, who has also written on 

 trigonometry and meteorology ; there are various memoirs 

 by M. Stroumpos on the refraction of light ; on the in- 

 ternal constitution of flame ; on the fundamental princi- 

 ples of hydrostatics, &c. The University is tolerably 

 well supplied with physical and chemical apparatus, and 

 in good time, we hope, some good student-work will be 

 done there. 



Many of the professors have studied in Paris, and we 

 see evidence in the text-books of French science and of 

 French thought. Prof. Chrestomanos appears, however, 

 in the compilation of his Chemistry, to have consulted 

 most of the recent books and memoirs. We are glad to 

 see Canizzaro often quoted as an authority. The work does 

 not present any speciallynoteworthy features,but it is sound 

 and eminently clear. The phraseology is at times some- 

 what strange to a western student ; thus we do not em- 



ploy such words as "Physiography" and " Phutology " . . . 

 After some prefatory remarks concerning the division 

 of the sciences, we have a few pages given to the history 

 of chemistry. The period of Alchemy is wrongly stated 

 to extend from 400 to 1500 A.D. Then latrochemistry 

 from 1500 to 1650 ; Phlogistic chemistry from 1650 to 

 1783 ; the new chemistry of Lavoisier and Davy, and so 

 on to the chemistry of Kekulci^ and Canizzaro. This is 

 followed by a short account of physical chemistry ; then 

 an account of crystallography with good figures of 

 crystals. Although many of the names of our elements 

 are derived from the Greek, the table of elements looks 

 rather puzzling : lead is of course p<iXvl3Sos, while molyb- 

 denum becomes p.o\vP8alviov ; platinum is ^evKo^pvaos ; 

 tungsten (or Wolfram) is jioXcppapiov ; nitrogen is at the 

 beginning of the alphabetical list ; copper near the end. 

 Again, as to compounds the names of the oxides of 

 nitrogen read as inro^fiSwv 'AfioTou ; o^eiBiov 'Afwrou ; 

 virpoidiS o^v ; vTTovLTpiKov o^v ; virptKov o^v. The theory of 

 atomicities is well developed : niobium and tantalum are 

 the only pentatomic elements ; while molybdenum and 

 tungsten are the only hexads. The peculiar atomicities 

 of nitrogen and iron are not noticed. The building up of 

 compounds on the type respectively of one, two, and three 

 molecules of water is fully discussed (p.opi.ov is the term 

 used in place of our low-Latin molecula). Full tables of 

 grouped elements appear ; and the naming of compounds 

 is considered. After this considerable and important in- 

 troduction the work begins with hydrogen in the usual 

 manner, and the account of the other element follows in 

 due course. 



The "Scientific Paradoxes" of Prof. Stroumpos is a 

 volume of essays on physics and physiology ; including 

 magnetism, electricity, illusions, alchemy. Here too we 

 find paradoxes of another kind ; would Mr. Glaisher re- 

 cognise his name as o rXaio-xf/Jos, or Mr. Coxwell as 

 o Ko^oueAXos .' The treatise on the Air, by the same 

 author, is a tolerably complete treatise on pneumatics, 

 illustrated by very crude, but original and sufficient wood- 

 cuts. The discourse on the history of Science is very 

 interesting, and full of excerpts from Plato, Aristotle, and 

 other ancient writers. For them we think Prof. Stroumpos 

 has claimed too much ; we cannot with any degree of 

 certainty assert that Aristotle discovered that the air pos- 

 sesses weight. His experiment at the outset is altogether 

 faulty, for he tells us that an inflated skin (o ■af^vir^pivos 

 do-Kot) weighs more when filled with air than when empty, 

 that is, not inflated. This of course we know from the 

 law of Archimedes is false ; a bladder full of air weighed 

 in air can weigh no more than the uninflated bladder. 

 These works constitute the commencement of Athenian 

 science. The city, while its art, and literature, and phi- 

 losophy, have unhappily long passed their culminating 

 point, is more scientific than it has ever been before. Not 

 far from the place in which the Peripatetic made his ex- 

 periment with a crude statera and an empty wine skin 

 with Theophrastus as demonstrator, Stroumpos now 

 weighs his really vacuous vessel, and Chrestomanos ex- 

 plodes oxygen and hydrogen. Thirty years of science in 

 a remote city, out of the highways of European intelli- 

 gence, cannot effect much ; but we hope in the course of 

 the century origmal workers will multiply in Athens, and 

 as much will be done to promote chemistry and physics. 



