872 



SCIENCE. 



[N. 8. Vol. XXIII. No. 597. 



his personality on college and community 

 more profonndly than any Harvard teacher 

 of his generation, should have sometimes 

 been overcome by the hopelessness of try- 

 ing to express one's personality at all. 

 This but reveals the delicate elements of 

 his inmost character ; a warmth of emotion 

 hardly to be expected of one prevailingly 

 so cheerful, a sensitiveness to misunder- 

 standings and estrangements hardly to be 

 looked for in so aggressive a man. These 

 qualities only made him the more hiunane 

 in his dealings, and led him to set a higher 

 value on whatever might help towards sym- 

 pathy and mutual knowledge. Hence he 

 urged the deliberate study of men all 

 through the gamut of human qualities, 

 from those who are held in prisons to those 

 who dwell in palaces ; for he knew the profit 

 as well as the difficulty of such study, and 

 he regretted that the segregating action of 

 a highly developed social order should re- 

 quire men commonly to know only those 

 who are of about their own grade. "Per- 

 sonally," he wrote, "I value what I have 

 been so fortunate as to gain of acquaint- 

 ance with very diverse sorts of men more 

 highly than all else that I have won in the 

 way of knowledge." That is a summary 

 of Shaler's life-work in his own words. It 

 is a happiness to know that he thus valued 

 what he gained from others, for so we all, 

 officers, students and friends of the uni- 

 versity, and countless others in the great 

 outer world besides, may feel that we made 

 some return for the great gain that we 

 have had in knowing him. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 



Dr. J. FricJc's Physical Technique. Seventh 



edition. By Dr. Otto Lehmann. Vieweg, 



Brunswick. 1905. Vol. I., Part II. 



This publication completes Volume I. of 



the seventh edition of this well-known work, 



the first part of which was reviewed in this 



magazine (Volume XX., p. 670, 1904). This 



second part of the first volume contains ex- 

 actly 1,000 pages and is enriched by nearly 

 2,000 illustrations. 



The first part of this fijst volume was de- 

 voted largely to a description of the necessary 

 equipment of a physical laboratory, together 

 with a description in detail of various tech- 

 nical processes such as soldering, glass blow- 

 ing, construction of delicate apparatus, etc. 

 This second part begins with an ' introduction 

 to physical demonstrations,' which is followed 

 by twelve chapters devoted to the various sub- 

 divisions of mechanics and heat. 



In the introduction the author begins by 

 stating what he considers to be the object of 

 physics, and by describing the method fol- 

 lowed by him in presenting the matter to his 

 classes. The first subject treated, therefore, 

 is that of forces, which is followed by a de- 

 scription of the meaning of units of length, 

 time and mass, each of these being accom- 

 panied by rather elaborate descriptions of the 

 best methods of making measurements. With- 

 out going into details, it may be interesting 

 to state the order in which the subjects of 

 physics are taken up. These are as fol- 

 lows: statics, solid bodies, hydrostatics, fluids, 

 aerostatics, gases, temperature, quantity of 

 heat, dynamics, hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, 

 thermodynamics. Under the head of each of 

 these, lecture experiments are described in 

 full, which are designed to illustrate the 

 varied phenomena and at the same time to 

 enable measurements of the various quantities 

 to be made on a large scale before the classes. 

 The author attempts to give in each case in- 

 formation concerning the experiments and 

 apparatus, so that, if a laboratory is not 

 equipped with the apparatus as furnished by 

 the large commercial houses, it is possible for 

 the instructor himself to make simple and 

 accurate apparatus. In some respects the 

 book is a most admirable text-book for classes, 

 and no one can read it without gaining much 

 information in regard to both the theoretical 

 and the practical side of the subject. 



One has only words of praise to say of the 

 object of the worlc, of the manner in which 

 this has been carried out by. the author, and 

 of the admirable spirit in which the publisher 



