38o 



NATURE 



[Mar. 19, 1874 



Baconica, or the Natural Rarieties of England, Scotland, 

 and Wales, according as they are to be found in every 

 Shire." (London, 1660. Svo.) The passage referred to in 

 the Examen desinti-resse we presume was taken from the 

 Paris edition (1667. i2mo.), under Carnarvonshire (pp. 

 244, 245 of the French, pp. 147, 148 of the English edition). 

 In his dedication he writes : — " The calling I have 

 entred into, and the capacity * wherein I have the 

 honour to serve your Lordship, wil (I fear) offend the 

 weake tendernesse of some, who think these deep searches 

 into reason misbecoming a Preacher of Faith, and the 

 contemplation of the works of Nature very impedimentall 

 (if not destructive) to the work of Grace," &c. 



Stirling (whom his rival Clairaut calls " one of the 

 greatest geometricians I know in Europe") enunciated 

 without demonstrationapproximate propositions respecting 

 the magnitude and the direction of the attraction of an 

 homogeneous oblatum-zX. its surface and implicitly (§ 156) 

 established Newton's postulate. 



We now proceed to give an account of the original 

 work (not seen by Mr. Todhunter) entitled " Ddgrd du 

 meridien entre Paris et Amiens." (Paris, 1740.) It has 

 6 pp. of contents : — Ivi. pp. of Part I. in nine chapters, 

 with 3 pp. of plates. Part 1 1, is " Mesure de la terre " par 

 M. I'Abbe Picard, 106 pp., with 10 pp. on Aberration of 

 fixed stars, and 5 pp. of fixedjplates. On p. vi. we find, 

 " le ddgrd compare k celui que nous avons mesurd au 

 cercle polaire, que nous avons trouve de 57437, 9 toises 

 donne la terre aplatie vers les poles ; et le rapport de 

 I'Axe au diametrede I'equateur, comme 177 k 17S." We 

 had some difficulty in finding the book in the Museum 

 from Mr. Todhunter's description ; at last we found it 

 catalogued under the heading Picard. 



The Museum copy of the Essay by Celsius (§§ 198, 

 739, not seen by our author), entitled " De Observationi- 

 bus," (S:c.,' Upsalia?, 173S, is bound up with several other 

 tractates on our subject, but all the rest partake of the 

 character of the ante-Newtonian writers. Thus Nicolaus 

 Winterberg (1596) heads his chapters — " Rotundam esse 

 (terram) Hquido apparet ; " " Terram cum aqua conjunc- 

 tam <T<patpociSrii> asserimus ; " and he further maintains the 

 earth to be the centre of system of universe. We need 

 not give an analysis 'of Celsius's work here ; for this is 

 undoubtedly the o-iginal from which the German trans- 

 lation, discussed by Mr. Todhunter, was taken. He 

 styles Newton " vir immortalis," and, deciding against 

 James Cassini, thus ends his ten-page tract — " Spero 

 itaque me jam a;quo et candido lectori satis superque 

 ostendisse observationes Cassinianas, tam coelestes quam 

 terrestres in Gallia prascipue meridionali habitas, adeo 

 incertas esse et inde figura telluris nuUo modo deduci 

 queat." 



We have now arrived at the period when the question 

 between the Newtonians and Cassinians was decisively 

 settled, and the victory of the oblatcs over the oblon^^s ac- 

 knowledged even by the Cassinis. This result was 

 brought about by the expedition to Lapland in 1736-37, 

 and won for its ruHng spirit, Maupertuis, Voltaire's witty 

 compliment of having " aplati les p61es et les Cassinis." 



R. Tucker 

 {Jo be continued.) 



* He was chaplain to the "Rt. Hon. 

 Henry Somerset Lord Herbert, &c." 



most noble Lord and Ma 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical. By 

 William Allen Miller, M.D., LL.L). Part II. Inorganic 

 Chemistry. Revised by Herbert McLeod, F.C.S., Pro- 

 fessor of Experimental Science, Indian Civil Engineer- 

 ing College, Cooper's Hill. 5th edit., with additions. 

 (London : Longmans, 1874.) 

 It will of course be superfluous to say anything in the 

 way of criticism concerning this well-known manual. The 

 death of its lamented author has necessitated the placing 

 of the fifth edition in other hands, and it could not 

 have fallen into better than those of its present editor. 

 The principal changes so far have been a re-arrangement 

 of the articles in accordance with the modern method of 

 study and the removal of certain parts, such as those on 

 gas analysis and the description of certain carbon com- 

 pounds, to the appendix preparatory to their removal to 

 the third part, to which they more strictly belong. 



Some of the constitutional formuhe, now so much in 

 use, have been introduced, and the kind selected have 

 been those used by Frankland in his well-known " Lec- 

 ture Notes." We are, however, glad to see that these 

 have not been used to the exclusion of the notation 

 adopted in former editions. 



Great credit is due to Prof McLeod for the thorough 

 and conscientious way in which he has performed his task, 

 and the only fault we have to find is that there is occa- 

 sionally a certain amount of confusion caused by the use 

 of different names for the same body, a fault for which, 

 however, the science itself is largely responsible. 



R. J. F. 



Zones of Parallel Lines of Elevation in the Earth's 

 Crust. By Angus Ross, sec. and mem. com. N. S. 

 Inst, of Nat. Science. (Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1S72.) 

 He is a bold man who will predicate that no future 

 discovered fact will disturb even the most widely ac- 

 cepted hypothesis. This being so, all hypotheses being 

 in fact tentative only, and valuable in so far as they 

 enable us to classify and deduce laws from such facts as 

 we know, we ought to welcome every generalisation which 

 groups known facts under some new aspect. In 

 the above pamphlet we have such a generalisation. 

 Whether it will prove to be supported by future dis- 

 covery, or even whether it can be rigidly applied to 

 explain actual facts will require much close criticism to 

 determine. We can only say that it is ingenious and 

 novel. The author claims to have discovered the method 

 of distribution of the various mountain chains or lines of 

 anticlinal elevation. These he asserts are arranged in 

 parallel lines along certain belts or zones which girdle 

 the earth, each zone following approximately the course 

 of a great circle, and each having for its medial line or 

 axis a line of volcanoes. Of these zones he describes 

 seven, and we may extract one as a type of the rest. 

 " Zone No. i on the Rocky Mountain system has its axial 

 line in the volcanic belt extending from the middle Andes, 

 inclusive, across Central America along the Rocky 

 Mountains, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamtschatka, 

 the Kurile Islands, Japan Islands, Loochoo Islands, 

 Philippine Islands, Palawan, and Borneo. The Islands 

 of Amsterdam and St. Paul, the Kerguelen Islands, the 

 South Sandwich Islaiids, and South Georgia seem to 

 indicate the completion of the more southerly part of the 

 (approximately) great circle." The author, as we have 

 said, describes seven such zones or belts which intersect 

 one another, and argues that the points of intersection 

 are foci of volcanic energy. He argues also that the 

 great mountain-chains in their direction follow the course 

 of one or other of these zones, and thus describes their 

 arrangement : — " In each zone the proximity and elevation 

 of the anticlinals diminish gradually from the axial line 

 outwards, and if zone No. i be considered the most recent. 



