June 3, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



179 



server. The flavor, while sufficiently literary, 

 lacks a certain essence to be caught up only 

 from the activities of the observatory. 



And yet it was expected that a volume count- 

 ing Miss Gierke, the graceful, accurate and 

 forceful author of ' A Popular History of 

 Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century,' 

 among its sponsors would not be lacking in 

 vital interest. Her contributions to ' Astron- 

 omy ' have not fallen below her former high 

 standard, except in very few particulars. Es- 

 pecially noteworthy and able are the pages on 

 the history of the achievements of gravita- 

 tional astronomy of the period immediately 

 succeeding Newton. But by the time the 

 modern stage of spectroscopic astronomy is 

 reached one feels a lack of the former easy 

 swing of her pen, and one also regrets to no- 

 tice a trace of that peculiar English tendency 

 to ignore foreign scientific achievement. 

 How the judicious pen of Miss Gierke could 

 refrain from setting in artistic relief the grand 

 achievements of a Kirchoff, while it does en- 

 thusiastic and just homage to a Huggins, is 

 inexplicable except on grounds of excessive 

 brevity. Truth to say, Miss Gierke has always 

 seemed to repudiate insularity in all of her 

 astronomical writings, and one would not tax 

 her here with anything more than an uncon- 

 scious bias, in certain particulars, toward her 

 own countrymen, nor indeed generally with 

 anything less than a most fascinating and pow- 

 erful presentation of the thrilling discoveries 

 and stupendous facts of astronomical science. 



Professor Gore's review of the science of the 

 stellar universe gives ample evidence of a de- 

 termination to bring before the cultured public 

 science fresh from its primal sources. Nearly 

 every page bears evidence of faithful apprecia- 

 tion of the original contributions of astronomers 

 and of a consistent assimilation of the vast mass 

 of material. Although lacking somewhat in 

 that vivacity of style characteristic of Miss 

 Gierke, one is impressed with the conscientious 

 fervour and decisive grasp of Professor Gore's 

 presentation of subjects bristling with number- 

 less suggestive facts and insuperable difficul- 

 ties. 



For Professor Fowler, the accomplished prac- 

 tical astronomer, so favorably known by his 



successful observational work, was reserved the 

 more or less thankless task of furnishing the 

 more mathematical side of the book. Ever 

 since Laplace, under an unlucky star, rashly 

 attempted to put mathematics into words, in the 

 celebrated Systeme du Monde, we have become 

 convinced of the necessary inadequateness of 

 ordinary language, and even of ordinary geom- 

 etry, to the expression of this class of ideas. 

 We cannot, therefore, harshly set forth the weak 

 points which necessarily inhere in an attempt 

 to compress all the marvels of mathematical 

 astronomy into less than two hundred pages of 

 a popular account. Eather would we express 

 the genuine surprise which one experiences in 

 following the author's ingenuity in presenting 

 the difficult geometrical and dynamical con- 

 ceptions of the astronomer. Most interesting 

 is the complete and accurate though condensed 

 review of the instrumental appliances charac- 

 teristic of modern astronomy. 



It would be a graceless act to close this brief 

 review of a valuable addition to the popular side 

 of astronomy without at once complimenting 

 the American publishers on the fair typography, 

 and condoling with them on the binding of a 

 book of this character in a style bereft of every 

 element of propriety and good taste. 



M. B. Snyder. 



Lehrbuch der Entwieklungsgeschichte des Men- 

 schen. Von Professor J. Kollmann. Jena, 

 Fischer. 1898. 8vo. Pp. xii + 658. 

 Embryological literature has been again 

 enriched by a valuable text-book by Professor 

 Kollmann (Basel, Switzerland). As the title 

 indicates, the work deals preeminently with 

 human embryology, comparative-embryological 

 facts being adduced only in so far as desirable 

 for a better understanding of corresponding 

 processes in man. The book is furnished with 

 a considerable number of good illustrations, of 

 which a great many are original and entirely 

 new. Preference is given to illustrations 

 taken from ' plastic reconstructions ' and so- 

 called ' combined drawings.' Such illustrations 

 are, of course, especially valuable for demon- 

 strating complicated morphological structures 

 which in the single sections of a series are only 

 shown in fragments. It needs, however, to be 



