May 17, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



oS? 



cast to essays on tlic most tliguified subject 

 in the whole range of the sciences. Xo 

 carelessness oi* vulgarity in style was ever 

 a compliment to the literary taste of a 

 reader, and neither the cause of literature, 

 science nor anything else is likelj' to be en- 

 hanced by allusions to ' some Germans 

 nibbling ' at stellar photometry; or by pon- 

 derous anecdotes about hypothetical carrots, 

 " that grew so well that the roots reached 

 right through to the other side of the earth." 



The proof revision has been none too care- 

 fully done — illustrations on pages 60 and 

 116 have been interchanged ; the incorrect 

 spelling of Palitzsch would not perhaps at- 

 tract attention, except that the author, being 

 also the compiler of a handj- little German- 

 French-English lexicon, we expect better 

 things of him ; and while ' Bob ' passes cur- 

 rent everj^'here for Robert, ' Boberts ' will 

 scarcely do for Roberts. The general scien- 

 tific reliability of statement is fully up to 

 the standard expected of Mr. Chambers, and 

 only one or two inaccuracies need be jjointed 

 out — at the' middle of page 18, where he 

 should have WTitten, ' a vertical plane pass- 

 ing through the zenith;' and on page 7.'5, 

 where the exact opposite of what is meant 

 is inadvertently said, regarding the stars 

 ' converging towards ' a point in Hercules. 



Of course in so small a book one must 

 not expect everything ; but some omissions 

 are noteworthy. In even a magazine article 

 about the stars a single page about their 

 distances would be only too brief, but Mr. 

 Chambers gives only this amount in a 

 volume of 150 pages, with no allusion to the 

 name of Bessel in this connection, or Briin- 

 now or Gill, The classic work of Dr. Gould 

 should not have been omitted. The superb 

 advances of stellar photography in the hands 

 of the brothers Henry, Russell, Gill, 

 Barnard, Roberts, Wolf and others are 

 barely alluded to, or left out entirely. The 

 accurate researches on the brightness of 

 stars by the Potsdam astronomers are wholly 



ignored. If the space of six pages could be 

 given to ' The Stars in Poetry,' and a third 

 of that amount to speculative ' rubbish ' re- 

 garding the origin of the Milky Way, is it 

 quite the thing to have crowded out com- 

 pletely the nebular hj-pothesis, which has 

 engaged such master minds as Herscliel, 

 La Place, Lord Kelvin and Darwin ? 

 Several chapters are almost purely descrip- 

 tive, or mere geography of the heavens, as. 

 if a handbook for the use of small tele- 

 scopes ; a little yeast here would have done 

 no harm ; but it should be pervasive and 

 inherent^ — not added as an afterthought. 

 Mr. Maunder has appended an excellent 

 chapter on the maiwels of the spectroscope 

 as applied to the stars and nebulse. 



It is not, however, intended to imply that 

 there is not much that is excellent in Mr. 

 Chambers's Story of the Stars, both as to form 

 and arrangement. Its convenient size, clear 

 type and authoritative statements (even 

 with occasional lapses into ' dread ' techni- 

 calities) render it, on the whole, an in- 

 telligible and interesting booklet, which will 

 be a vast help to the student and general 

 reader, and is worth double what the pub- 

 lishers ask for it. But the author has far 

 from succeeded in making the most and best 

 of his opportunitJ^ David P. Todd. 



AMHEE.ST College. 

 The World of Matter: A Guide to the Study of 



Chemistry and Mineralogy. By Harlan H. 



Ballard, A. M. Boston, D. C. Heath 



& Co. 1894. 



The object of this book is apparently to 

 enable those who may not have an oppor- 

 tunity to study natural phenomena in a 

 thorough way to obtain some comprehen- 

 sion of the objects and methods of scienti- 

 fic investigation by means of a few well 

 chosen experiments. The object is a good 

 one ; will a study of this book further it? 



It is impossible to say definitely, yes or 

 no. The explanations, so far as thej- go, are 

 generally excellent, but the tendencj- of the 



