984 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 286. 



ordinate them to the scheme of the book, and 

 with grasp enough to weld their contributions 

 into a consistent whole. With the experience 

 he has now acquired, and with his own rela- 

 tively greater knowledge of the subject, Dr. 

 Eastman will doubtless do better in Volume II. 

 Meanwhile this first volume forms a wonderful 

 storehouse of facts, drawings and names ; and 

 no more reliable compendium of the paleontol- 

 ogy of invertebrate animals is to be obtained. 



The copy submitted for review bears date 

 1900, and there is no indication of the fact that 

 pages 1-352 were first published in November, 

 1896. They were issued in a separate wrapper, 

 with title marked Vol. I., Part I., and dated 

 London and New York, 1896. But as it hap- 

 pens, this Part I. was not published in London : 

 the publishers refused, and still refuse, to sell it 

 in England, and I owe my copy to the kindness 

 of Dr. Eastman. Therefore both title pages are 

 bibliographically incorrect — 'for trade reasons.' 

 I am also informed that the sections by Dr. Dall 

 and Professor Hyatt were distributed some time 

 ago ; but that was no doubt a private matter, 

 which cannot affect the date of the new names. 



Trade reasons must also account for the fact 

 that the English editions of so many German 

 scientific works are printed with a smaller 

 page, into which the illustrations do not fit. 

 But it is to be hoped that there is no real need 

 for such works to be printed on porous paper. 

 This is particularly unfortunate in the case of 

 really useful books, such as the present, de- 

 serving of permanent correction and annotation. 

 F. A. Bathee. 



The Meyer's Kinetic Theory of Gases. Oskae 

 Emil Meyer, translated from the second re- 

 vised edition by Robert E. Baynes. Lon- 

 don, New York and Bombay, Longmans, 

 Green & Co. 1899. Pp. xvi + 472. 

 ' "I undertook therefore to exhibit the ki- 

 netic theory of gases in such a way as to be more 

 easily intelligible to wider circles, and especially 

 to chemists and other natural philosophers to 

 whom mathematics are not congenial. To this 

 end I endeavored, much more than was other- 

 wise usual, not only to develop the theory by 

 calculation, but rather to support it by observa- 

 tion, and found it on experiment." 



This extract from the Author's Preface, ap- 

 parently written in English by the author, will 

 be recognized by all who know his treatise in 

 any form, old or new, as an accurate descrip- 

 tion of his work. Boltzmann, in the Vorwort 

 to his Gastheorie, remarks: " Jedoch verfolgt 

 das Meyer'sche Buch, so anerkannt vortrefiBich 

 es fiir Chemiker und Studirende der Physi- 

 kalischen Chemie ist, vollig andere Zwecke." 

 The contrast between the purpose of Meyer 

 and that of Boltzmann is as marked now as it 

 ever was ; for the new edition of Meyer follows 

 very closely the lines of the first. The nut is still 

 cracked for us in the first part of the book and 

 the kernel exposed, while the shell is carefully 

 saved in the mathematical appendices for those 

 who may be disposed to try their teeth upon it. 



The clear yet compendious character of the 

 treatise has made it an excellent book to con- 

 sult ; and it has therefore seemed to the re- 

 viewer worth while to make a somewhat de- 

 tailed comparison of the new English edition 

 with the old German one, in order to note the 

 developments which have been made during 

 the past twenty-three years in what may be 

 called the physicist's, as distinguished from the 

 mathematician's, knowledge of gases. The fol- 

 lowing quotations are accordingly selected to 

 illustrate the most important of these changes. 

 They touch many, but not all, interesting fea- 

 tures of the kinetic theory. It will be seen 

 that the time since the first edition of Meyer 

 appeared, in 1887, has been for this theory a 

 period of confirmation and careful improve- 

 ment rather than one of revolution or rapid 

 advance. The nature and results of intermo- 

 lecular,attraction, the conformation and inter- 

 nal properties of the molecule, these are the 

 problems with which the theory is now engaged 

 and these are problems with which progress 

 may well be slow. 



In the following reviews the title of each suc- 

 cessive chapter, up to the mathematical appen- 

 dices, will be given, even when the chapter con- 

 tains nothing deserving of special meution as 

 new. 



Chapter I. — Foundations of the Hypothesis. 

 Chapter II. — Pressure of Gases. 

 Chapter III. — MaxweWs Latu of the Unequal 



Distribution of Molecular Speed. 



