232 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. YOL. XXXVIII. No. 972 



■which, like the America in the yacht race, is 

 first, with no second. 



This encyclopedia wiU fortunately not fill a 

 five-foot shelf, but if we may judge from the 

 present 46 parts, reaching Skelett, may go 

 about to 60 and fill a little over two feet. 

 According to German custom, it is issued 

 unbound, and the parts do not appear in strict 

 alphabetical order, which makes a slight diffi- 

 culty in knowing at the present time exactly 

 what it will contain. Nevertheless, the paging 

 will be perfectly consecutive, and the piece- 

 meal method of appearance has the advantage 

 of permitting the articles to have the greatest 

 possible freshness, and does not lead to the 

 errors that sometimes crept into the " Britan- 

 nica " from the immensity of the task of 

 printing. The only possible comparison of the 

 present work is with the " Britannica," which, 

 although of general scope, contains scientific 

 articles which are of the same general caliber 

 as these. In both cases the articles are not 

 popular, and are written by thoroughly com- 

 petent writers, but at the same time they are 

 interestingly written, and so clear as to be 

 understood by the layman desiring to obtain 

 exact knowledge. The present encyclopedia is 

 issued at 2.50 Marks per part, so that if there 

 shall be sixty, the cost of the whole will be less 

 than forty dollars, exclusive of binding, a 

 price that wiU make its ownership possible to 

 m.any a scientific man to whom the " Britan- 

 nica " at one hundred and twenty-five dollars 

 would be an impossibility. The form of the 

 page is also much more convenient than that 

 of the " Britannica," and the volumes are less 

 unwieldy. The print is as good, if not better, 

 although decidedly different, the type being 

 blacker and somewhat clearer, although not 

 leaded, so. that it is not easy to say which is 

 the easier to read. The printing is, however, 

 certainly as good, and the illustrations, at least 

 in the opinion of the reviewer, are decidedly 

 better, some of the biological illustrations be- 

 ing beautiful to look at, and even the physical 

 ones being remarkably sclear. The reviewer 

 admits with pain that many of the cuts in the 

 " Britannica " have to him a decidedly cheap 

 look, which is never the case in the German 



work. These are photoengravings of a high 

 quality of workmanship, and are used in great 

 profusion. For instance, in the article Ei und 

 Eibildung we find a thirty-three-page article 

 profusely illustrated with beautiful and in- 

 structive cuts, while in the article Egg in the 

 " Britannica " we find an article of three and 

 a half pages, without a single picture. Un- 

 doubtedly- the matter of the article is found 

 somewhere else, but as a matter of fact the 

 article on Embryology is similarly devoid of 

 illustrations. Whether this is due to the 

 smaller expense of printing illustrations in 

 Germany we do not know, but the presence of 

 the illustrations is a very desirable feature. 



It is obviously impossible for any individual 

 scientist to comment on all the sciences, so 

 that the reviewer will confine himself tO' 

 singling out a few articles on subjects with 

 which he is familiar. The article on Elektro- 

 optik is by Professor Voigt, of Gottingen, the 

 chief authority on the subject, and the article 

 on Lichtbogenentladung, a forty-page article 

 on a new subject, by Professor Simon, of Gott- 

 ingen, is a mine of information on that sub- 

 ject, with very attractive figures, reproduc- 

 tions of oscillograms by the author. All the 

 electrical articles are well handled; we will 

 mention only that on Elektrodynamik, by H. 

 Scholl, which includes the treatment of all 

 the theories from the classical ones down to the 

 theory of relativity, in compact and clear 

 statement, and that on Elektrische Masssys- 

 teme, by F. Emde, in which, beside a very clear 

 treatment of the subject, we find a very in- 

 genious graphical treatment by a diagram 

 showing not only the dimensions, but also the 

 relative magnitudes of the most important 

 dynamical units. For the sake of comparison 

 we will consider the articles on Elasticity in 

 the " Britannica " and the present work in 

 some detail. In the " Britannica " we have a 

 nineteen-page article by Professor Love, of 

 Oxford, the author of the leading treatise on 

 the subject in any language, in which the 

 leading equations of the theory are stated, 

 with the chief practical results, without any 

 great mathematical detail. In the German 

 work we have an article of twenty-seven pages 



