800 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1092 



But even if we admit that Bacon wrote tlie 

 " De secretis " as we have it in 1248 and was at 

 that time afraid of the Inquisition, the ques- 

 tion remains : why in 1267-8, when mentioning 

 the explosive in those works in which he made 

 such desperate efforts to secure the pope as 

 his patron and boasted repeatedly of his own 

 superiority to his contemporaries, did he not 

 claim the credit of the invention which he had 

 set forth in cipher twenty years before? The 

 simple answer is: it was not his invention. 



One instance must be added to show how 

 Colonel Hime misinterprets the text of the 

 " De secretis " in his eagerness to smell powder 

 everywhere. He writes (p. 324) : 



Now, towards the end of Chap. X., Bacon 

 speaks without disguise of charcoal under the 

 name of the wood from which it is made, and 

 mentions the two trees, hazel and willow, which 

 give the best. He significantly adds that when 

 charcoal is added to proper proportions of cer- 

 tain other substances, something noteworthy 

 happens. Since, then, charcoal is one of the sub- 

 jects of these two chapters, it becomes all the 

 more probable that saltpeter forms another. 



In a note Hime adds the Latin of the pas- 

 sage in question : 



Si vero partes virgulti coryli aut salicis mul- 

 tarum justa rerum serie apte ordinaveris, unionem 

 naturalem servabunt: et hoe non tradas oblivioni, 

 quia valet ad multa. 



Let us note first that these last words do 

 not mean, " something noteworthy happens," 

 but " don't forget this, because it's valuable." 

 Thus the true wording does not in the least 

 suggest an explosion, as Colonel Hime's trans- 

 lation does. Secondly, the words partes virgulti 

 coryli aut salicis probably do not denote char- 

 coal but twigs or rods of hazel or willow, as 

 they do in Bacon's account of the experiment 

 performed by magicians with a split hazel rod. 

 It occurs both in the " Opus Maius " (Bridges, 

 II., 219) and "Opus Tertium" (Little, 49-50; 

 Duhem, 153) ; I quote the latter. 



Unde magici accipiunt virgas coruli et salicum, 

 et dividunt eas secundum longitudinem, et faciunt 

 eas distare secundum quantitatem palmae, et ad- 

 dunt carmina sua, et coniungunt partes divise; 

 sed non propter carmina, sed ex naturali pro- 



prietate. (Wherefore magicians take rods of hazel 

 and willow, and divide them lengthwise, and hold 

 them the breadth of a palm apart, and add their 

 charms, and the divided parts come together; but 

 not on account of the charms, but from their very 

 natures). 



Thirdly, it is probably precisely this hazel- 

 rod experiment to which the writer of the pas- 

 sage quoted by Hime refers. Multarum justa 

 rerum serie ordinaveris seems a hurried equiv- 

 alent for the more specific directions in the 

 passages in the Opus Maius and Opus Tertium, 

 and this bears out what I have already sug- 

 gested, that the De secretis may be in part at 

 least a brief popular compilation from Bacon's 

 other works. Finally, the phrase unionem 

 naturalem servabunt applies better to the 

 bending together in the middle of two halves 

 of a split hazel rod held apart at the ends 

 than it does to a mixture of saltpeter, char- 

 coal and sulphur. 



And now what becomes of Colonel Hime's 

 assertion, " Since therefore charcoal is one of 

 the subjects of these two chapters, it becomes 

 all the more probable that saltpeter forms an- 

 other " ? We may alter it to read thus : since 

 charcoal is not a subject of either of these 

 chapters, it becomes all the more improbable 

 that a method of refining saltpeter is dis- 

 closed in them in cipher. 



Lynn Thoendike 



Western Reserve University 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 A Meteorological Treatise on the Circulation 

 and Radiation in the Atmospheres of the 

 Earth and of the Sun. By Frank H. 

 BiGELOW, M.A., L.H.D., Professor of Meteor, 

 ology in the U. S. Weather Bureau, 1891- 

 1910, and in the Argentine Meteorological 

 Office since 1910. New York, John Wiley 

 and Sons, Inc., 1915. Pp. xi+431. 78 

 figures in the text. 



This volume is an elaboration of the papers 

 on atmospheric thermodynamics which Pro- 

 fessor Bigelow published in the American Jour- 

 nal of Science for December, 1912, and March, 

 1913, with additions on the laws of storms, on 

 solar constant of radiation, on atmospheric 



