750 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S, Vol. XXII. No. 571. 



most commanding figure in the astronomy of 

 our time.' Perhaps the same phrase may be 

 used, with alteration in date, of ISTewcomb 

 himself. At any rate, his figure is conspicu- 

 ous enough to justify many times over the 

 autobiographical references in the early part 

 of the book, for which he makes a modest 

 apology in the preface. We are sure that the 

 opinion of the friends who urged their publi- 

 cation will be endorsed by a wide circle of 

 readers. To be able to identify the Newcomb 

 we know- — the man who courageously set out 

 to reduce to order a vast mass of heterogene- 

 ous accumulated observations, and who did 

 it — ^with the child who taught himself to add 

 by using a bed-quilt as an abacus; with the 

 boy who listened to an astronomical lecture 

 by his father (somewhat as J. Homer Lane 

 afterwards listened to Newcomb himself) and 

 then said, ' Father, I think you were wrong in 

 one thing ' (the story is told by the father) ; 

 with the youth who was apprenticed to a 

 quack doctor and ran away because he could 

 not stand the quackery; with the man who 

 became perforce a soldier at a moment's notice 

 — there is surely nothing of harm in our being 

 allowed this possibility, and equally surely 

 there is much of good. We are grateful to 

 the author for putting aside his own natural 

 feelings in the interests of his readers. 



A critic is morally bound to devote one 

 paragraph to complaints, and we will complain 

 of some deficiency in references. There is, 

 for instance, a chapter on ' Scientific England,' 

 describing a visit to Europe with no date at- 

 tached. After looking through the chapter in 

 vain for a date, we turned to the index for 

 the eclipse which is referred to several times 

 in the chapter as supplying the motive for the 

 expedition. It is not mentioned in the index ! 

 Another eclipse (that of 1860, observed in 

 America by ISTewcomb) is indexed, but there 

 is no reference to the one mentioned at least 

 half a dozen times in Chapter X. 



But having fulfilled this critical duty, we 

 gladly return to the more congenial attitude 

 of commendation, and say that the book is 

 beautifully printed, and that there is an excel- 

 lent portrait of the author as a frontispiece. 



which is in itself enough to' make the book 



worth buying. 



H. H. Turner. 



IJjsriVEESiTY Observatoky, Oxford, 



November 11, 1905. 



Naturhonstanten in alphabetischer Anord- 

 nung. By Professor Dr. H. Erdmann and 

 Privatdocent Dr. P. Koeti-iner. Berlin, 

 Julius Springer. 1905. 8vo. Pp. 192. 

 This book on ' Constants of Nature ' is 

 mainly a collection of tables, containing such 

 information as, in the opinion of the authors, 

 is most frequently needed in chemical and 

 physical calculations. The selection made 

 seems in general to be a good one, though 

 some additions might have made it more use- 

 ful to the physicist. For example, there is 

 no table of the density of mercury at different 

 temperatures, no magnetic data, and under the 

 discussion of temperature measurement no 

 mention of thermocouples or pyrometers. 



The subject matter is arranged alphabetic- 

 ally and the book is furnished with a handy 

 thumb index. In the selection of headings 

 two distinct principles have been employed. 

 We find (1) the chemical elements — including 

 their salts — with the most important data re- 

 lating to them and (2) a discussion of phys- 

 ical and chemical methods of measurement 

 with tables containing the numerical constants 

 for various substances. For example, under 

 ' Iron ' the density, melting point and boiling 

 point of the element, the lines of its arc and. 

 spark spectrum are given; then follow the 

 molecular weight and density of twenty, the 

 solubility at different temperatures of seven 

 iron salts, the multiples and their logarithms 

 of the atomic weight, the specific gravity of 

 FeSO,, FeClg and Fe,(S0,)3 solutions of dif- 

 ferent concentration and finally the logarithms 

 of constants, frequently used in chemical an- 

 alyses, for example 



7aq 

 FeO"" "■" 



. Fe, , FeSa 



FeOs • 



This will show the great usefulness of the 

 book, especially for chemical work. Such an 

 arrangement proves in a great many cases 

 more convenient and — if we can speak of such 

 a thing in a collection of tables — more inter- 



