128 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1073 



small number liave the right to push their 

 colleagues aside and say we alone will serve 

 the country. 



Mr. "Wells asks for inventions; but inven- 

 tions are only made by those who are aware of 

 the requirements; it is often possible to devise 

 a means to an end when the end is known; 

 but those who might be of use are kept in the 

 dark, very many of us are not allowed to know 

 and to help. Professor Fleming has stated 

 his experience, in the all-important letter which 

 you have published; his authority on matters 

 of wireless telegraphy and electrical engineer- 

 ing generally is indeed properly described, in 

 Lord Curzon's words, as "high, not only in the 

 estimation of this country, but in that of the 

 whole world." I am in the same position as 

 he is. Though I have fifty years' experience 

 as a chemist, particularly in connection with 

 the materials now being used in the manufac- 

 ture of explosives and of natural and artificial 

 organic products, I have never once been con- 

 sulted; the only request for my assistance 

 that I have received, since the outbreak of the 

 war, came from a German gentleman long 

 naturalized as a British subject. No doubt, 

 I am properly regarded as merely a retired 

 professor, but I know highly competent 

 younger men among those trained by me who 

 are equally unutilized. 



Sir Joseph Larmor pointed out in your issue 

 of March 29 that the country has no use for 

 chemists. Yet we read daily in the papers 

 that the chemist is now the people's darling in 

 Germany, and that the war is a war of chem- 

 ists ; we know that it wiU be in industry when 

 fighting is over. But in a country which is 

 dominated by the laviryer-politician, in which, 

 to use Matthew Arnold's expression, " the 

 idea of science " is unknown, it can not well 

 be otherwise. We shall continue to muddle 

 along until, having reformed Oxford, we 

 have changed our schoolmasters and the idea 

 of science is abroad; it is perhaps fortunate 

 that it is fast being hammered into us by high 

 explosive shell. 



As a fellow of all but forty years' standing, 

 let me say in conclusion that, in my opinion, 

 unless the Eoyal Society be organized as a 

 whole forthwith in the service of the state, as 



well as provided with an efficient active exe- 

 cutive in full sympathy with the situation, 

 we shall deservedly sink into insignificance, 

 because the peers of science will have shown 

 themselves to be collectively impotent and. 

 without due sense of their public responsibili- 

 ties. — Henry E. Armstrong, in the London 

 Times. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Modern Instruments and Methods of Calcula- 

 tion. A hand-book of the Napier Tercen- 

 tenary Exhibition. Edited by E. M. Hoes- 

 BUKGH, with the cooperation of others. The 

 Macmillan Company, New York, 1914. Pp. 

 viii -f 344. Price $1.90 net. 

 It is very seldom that an international con- 

 gress or a celebration on the occasion of any 

 kind of academic anniversary offers the oppor- 

 tunity for the publication of anything more 

 elaborate than a volume of memoirs. Such 

 volumes are generally well worth the effort, but 

 there is rarely anything unique in the plan, 

 and the publications often serve as a tomb in 

 which various worthy articles are consigned 

 to oblivion. The Napier Tercentenary, how- 

 ever, offered an opportunity for something 

 radically different in the way of memorial 

 volumes. To be sure there is the collection of 

 essays, soon to appear; but the committee in 

 charge of the work hit upon the idea of an 

 exhibition of all sorts of tables and calculating 

 machines, and fortunately found a man well 

 trained in the field of calculation, sympathetic 

 with the historical development of the subject, 

 and skilful in setting forth the description of 

 material, and to this man they entrusted the 

 task of preparing a volume that is quite unique 

 in the history of such congresses. 



Mr. Horsburgh had in charge the arrange- 

 ment of the interesting exhibition in the uni- 

 versity, and to some extent this work is a 

 catalogue of the material displayed at that 

 time. It is much more than this, however, 

 since it includes a series of valuable essays 

 describing the tables, the calculating machines 

 of various types, and those instruments which, 

 together with models and other material, enter 

 into the equipment of a modern mathematical 

 laboratory. 



