546 
NATURE 
[ Oct. 8, 1885 
fact seems to be that up to a certain point the story of the 
Great Auk can be worked up and told by any one willing 
to labour at it. Beyond that point the difficulties begin. 
Mr. Grieve appears to be hardly aware of the existence 
of these difficulties, though some of them have been 
hinted at, if not pointed out, by his predecessors. The 
most serious charge that can be brought against him is 
that he has needlessly raised fresh difficulties for future 
investigators. Mistakes that have taken years of labour 
to correct, and the correction of which has been pub- 
lished, are again set agoing, just as if no progress in that 
direction had been made; and, even worse than this, 
some new assertions, or at least suggestions, are hazarded 
that have, I am persuaded, no firm ground. No doubt 
on some of these points I may be prejudiced; but 
according to my knowledge I perceive that on too many 
questions Mr. Grieve has been unable to distinguish 
between good evidence and bad. However, there is in 
this book a distinct gain to all historians of the Gare- 
fowl, and that is the information here first placed on 
record by Mr. Champley of Scarborough, who is known 
to have interested himself for many years in all that con- 
cerns this species. 
I most sincerely wish that I could accord higher praise 
to this work than I have beenable to do, for Mr. Grieve’s 
enthusiasm in the cause deserves greater success. It is 
seldom that any one but a Fennimore Cooper or a 
Charles Kingsley feels the romance that clings around the 
history of an expiring race. Most men—men of science 
especially—nowadays believe in the survival of the fittest, 
and are content to let the dead bury their dead. The 
moral lesson I do not venture to draw, and in conclusion 
have only to ask pardon of the readers of NATURE for 
putting myself so forward in this article. 
ALFRED NEWTON 
“THE WAVE OF TRANSLATION” 
The Wave of Translation in the Oceans of Water, Air, 
and Ether. By John Scott Russell, M.A., F.R.S, 
(London: Triibner and Co., 1835.) 
"JHE late Mr. J. Scott Russell was one of the most 
prominent and gifted naval architects which this 
country possessed in the middle of the present century. 
His name will long be remembered as the builder of the 
Great Eastern, the early advocate of the longitudinal 
system of framing iron and steel ships: the ingenious 
and eloquent expounder of the “wave-line” principle 
of design; and for many improvements in the theory 
and practice of iron steamship construction. His person- 
ality was at once striking and attractive, and his abilities 
were of an original and versatile kind. He was the author 
of a massive work upon naval architecture; and of 
numerous papers read before various learned societies. 
No one exercised greater influence than Mr. Scott Russell 
in promoting the cause of scientific education in naval 
architecture, and in stimulating and helping students, by 
numerous speeches and writings, to acquire a general and 
clear knowledge of the laws upon which the qualities of 
ships depend. 
Mr. Scott Russell’s writings were always interesting. 
He possessed the rare faculty of making the driest and 
most complicated of subjects intelligible, and even 
fascinating. Where he may not be correct in the hypo- 
theses, or justified in the sweeping generalisations, he 
sometimes hastily put forward, he is usually suggestive, 
and provocative of thought upon the part of his readers. 
He was a vigorous and clear—though with a tendency to 
be a too rapid—thinker ; and there are no writings upon 
naval architecture which have the power of fixing the 
attention and stimulating the intellect in a greater 
measure than those of Mr. Scott Russell. 
We regret to say that the present work is not likely toadd 
to the reputation of its author. It exhibits des défauts de 
ses gualités in their most pronounced form ; and if we were 
asked for an example of Mr. Scott Russell at his very 
weakest and worst we could hardly do better than refer to 
that portion of this book which has not been before pub- 
lished. One-half of the volume is devoted to a reprint of 
the Report made by Mr. Scott Russell to the British Asso- 
ciation in 1842-43, in which a description is given of the 
“solitary wave of translation,” which he discovered for 
himself in 1834, and the properties of which he did much 
to investigate and make known. This Report is not only. 
printed z7 extenso, but Part I. of the work consists exclu- 
sively of extracts from it. The same matter appears twice 
over—once as Part I. of the boo‘, and once as portions of 
the British Association Report. The Report describes 
the knowledge possessed by Mr. Scott Russell in 1843 of 
“the varieties, phenomena, and laws of waves, and the 
| conditions which affect their genesis and propagation.” 
This may be interesting from a biographical point of 
view, but its present scientific value is not great. Many 
things have happened since the date of this Report, 
such as the theoretical investigations of Airy, Stokes, 
Rankine, Froude, eminent French mathematicians, and 
others; and numerous observations have been made of 
the forms and properties of waves by scientific officers of 
our own and foreign navies. These constitute a mass 
of information which the present work completely 
ignores. 
One half of the book is taken up with the reprint of the 
British Association Report referred to, and with those ex- 
tracts fromit of which Part I.ismadeup. The remaining 
half contains the only new matter now published. This 
is divided into two sections, one being “on the analogy 
between the solitary wave in water and the sound wave in_ 
air,” and the other “on the great ocean of ether and its 
relation to matter.” The less said of these chapters the 
better. The following is an instance of how Mr. Scott 
Russell frames a theory or invents a hypothesis : “I am so 
impressed with the truth of this law, that the velocity of 
this solitary wave in any fluid is due to the depth of the 
fluid in which it moves, whether thick or rarefied, that I 
hazard the hypothesis, that in the unknown element which 
pervades the universe, and which, though unknown, is the 
cause and medium of the most familiar phenomena of 
everyday life, proceeding on the same basis of calculation 
as in the air and water occurs, we shall find that the 
ethereal ocean should be given a height of 5,000,000,000 
miles, and that the corresponding velocity of the solitary 
wave through that ocean would be 1,000,000,000 feet per 
second.” 
An atomic theory is framed upon the following basis : 
“The law of attractive force in the atom, in conformity 
with the law of Newton, is according to the sguare of the 
