August 4, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



155 



"For what do they be boimoin' him?" said 



Files-on-Parade. 

 ' ' 'E put the Microbes on the blink, ' ' the Color 



Sergeant said. 

 "An' did the Microbes 'urt the Blink?" said 



Piles -on-Parade. 

 ■"They put the Blink out of a job," the Color 

 Sergeant said. 

 "They are bounein' Doctor Wiley, and the 

 germs are runnin' free, 

 And the Microbes an' Baeilluses are chort- 



ilin' with glee. 

 For they'll get their starvin' 'ooks once more 



on folks like you an' me, 

 After bounein' Doctor Wiley in the 

 mornin '. ' ' 

 • — Horace Dodd Gastit, in Harper's WeeMy. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Handhuch der Klimatologie. Von Dr. Julius 



Hann^ Professor an der Universitat Wien. 



Dritte Auflage. 3 Volumes. Prices 15 ; 15 ; 



23 Marks. Stuttgart, J. Engelhorns Naehf. 



1908, 1910, 1911. 



A laborious work is now completed and 

 published. The progress of science may years 

 hence suggest modifications and improve- 

 ments. The history of science may bring 

 into prominence the names of others than 

 those quoted in this great work, but for the 

 present this monument must stand alone, 

 towering over other books as the pyramids of 

 Gizeh tower over the valley of the Nile. 



For forty years past Dr. Julius Hann has 

 heen filling meteorological journals and litera- 

 ture with a steady stream of works on the 

 •subject that has absorbed his thoughts and 

 life. Neither Newton nor Laplace surpassed 

 him in intense concentration of effort; neither 

 Euler nor Humboldt have published more 

 voluminously. Neither " The Voyage of the 

 ■Challenger " nor all the polar expeditions of 

 the past thirty years have contributed more to 

 ■our accurate knowledge of the atmosphere of 

 our own globe. 



In three volumes of text totalling 1,400 

 ■octavo pages "The Founder of Modern Cli- 

 matology" has given us both numerical and 

 textual descriptions and comparisons covering 



all the characteristic features, both the general 

 and the special local characteristics, of all the 

 known climates of the globe. At first sight it 

 would seem impossible to do this; but at nu- 

 merous localities the forces that build up local 

 climates are the same, so that the relative im- 

 portance of one or the other force controls the 

 result. 



Complex as are the atmosphere and its rela- 

 tions to the earth and man, to geology and 

 biology, to history and religion, yet all can be 

 analyzed into temperature, moisture, sunshine 

 and wind. The tabulation of these funda- 

 mental data gave Hann the handy material for 

 statistical intercomparison and study. Hence 

 his volumes are crowded with facts — dry facts, 

 if you will, but reliable material for care- 

 ful study. Of course the popular writer, 

 the superficial traveler, the advertising land 

 owner, is satisfied with a few striking items; 

 but the careful engineer, the large planter, the 

 discriminating physician, need every possible 

 detail that can affect any feature of human 

 interest. It is for these and all other accurate 

 students that Hann has compiled these solid 

 volumes. The exhaustive range of his read- 

 ing, the continuous appeal to the pencil mem- 

 oranda that he must have kept, the quotations 

 of reliable figures instead of general verbal 

 descriptions, make one feel that here we have 

 condensed facts and not fancies. Even the 

 elusive " sensible temperature " or " curve of 

 comfort " or the sensation of temperature 

 seems reducible to an exact function of tem- 

 perature, humidity and wind. 



Of course no satisfactory resume of Hann's 

 " Climatology" can be given here. We need 

 only say that volume I. (Stuttgart, 1908) is 

 the revised edition of an earlier work, trans- 

 lated and published in 1903 by Professor E. 

 DeC. Ward, of Harvard University. 



The second volume (Stuttgart, 1910) deals 

 with the tropical zone or the whole region 

 between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. 

 This is one half of the whole globe and in 

 some respects the most important half; it 

 extends from New Orleans, Cairo, Bagdad, 

 Hong Kong, Hawaii, and the Bonin Islands 

 on the north, to Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, 



