April 1st, 18S7.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



45 



lacking in one important particular. They obtained general 

 ideas on tlieir subject, and they laid down a foundation of broad 

 and ill-defined principles, but they had no definite and exact 

 quantitative knowledge. If they wished to construct apparatus, 

 or to carry out experiments, they knew what they should do in 

 an approximate sort of way, and as they went on they modiiied 

 their apparatus or plan of experiment as they found it necessary. 

 And very good results have been, and may be, obtained in 

 this way, but better work, and more of it may be done by hav- 

 ing a correct insight into, and perception of, the values of the 

 electrical units. And this book, more than any of its class 

 which has ever been published, will enable students to attain 

 to this very desirable clearness of perception. The method 

 adopted is the natural one of conducting the learner to per- 

 ceive, by experiment and trial, the real meaning and value of 

 electrical phenomena. In his preface, the author justifies his 

 mode of procedure by the following remarks : — 



" It is not by studying geometrical optics, much less physical 

 optics, that an infant gradually learns to appreciate the distance 

 of objects ; and, later on, it is not by studying a treatise on 

 struts, nor by listening to a course of lectures on structures, 

 that the child finds out that the table has legs, hard legs, round 

 legs. Feeling, looking, trying, in fact, a simple course of e.xperi- 

 mental investigation gives a child its knowledge ; and this, 

 therefore, I venture to think, is the method we should adopt 

 when commencing the study of electricity." 



This book is a boon to teachers of, and students in, science 

 and technological classes ; and perhaps in a still greater degree, 

 to the very great number of solitary students who cannot fail to 

 find that it will reduce to a minimum those knotty and obscure 

 points which are, perhaps in electricity more than in any other 

 subject, such a bugbear to the unassisted learner. 



First Year of Knowledge. By Paul Bert, Member of the French 

 Institute, Professor at the Sorbonne, Ex-Minister of Public 

 Instruction. Translated by Mme. Paul Bert. London : 

 Relfe Bros. 



This is a charming little book, and should be in the hands of 

 all instructors of young children. It is one of the results of the 

 ever-increasing effort to make the gaining of knowledge pleasant 

 and easy ; and most completely does it effect its object. 



As its name implies, the book is intended for beginners ; but 

 instead of being a succession of dry statements, set down in a 

 matter-of-fact manner — such as would have been the case had it 

 been produced twenty or thirty years ago — the child is insensibly 

 led on by the author's clear and pleasant manner until he has 

 acquired a fair knowledge of the rudiments of Natural History, 

 Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology, which are the subjects 

 chiefly treated. 



There are a large number of small but well-executed illustra- 

 tions, which form a most attractive feature in the book. 



Elderly and middle-aged people are apt to speak of their 

 school daj'S as the happiest time of their lives. If this were 

 true, with the crabbed methods of teaching of times past, how 

 much greater will be the happiness of our children who have all 

 these delightful books, and knowledge brought to them in so 

 pleasant a guise ? 



Railway Problems : An Inquiry into the Economic Conditions, 

 of Railway Working in Different Countries. By J. S. Jeans; 

 Author of "England's Supremacy," etc., etc. London 

 Longmans, Green and Co. 18S7. 



Having gone through this latest work of Mr. Jeans, we are at 

 a loss whether to look on it as a book of reference, or one for 

 general reading. On a cursory examination of its pages we 

 were inclined to the former view, and the very large number of 

 calculaticms, amounting to many thousands in all, upon which it 

 is founded, would, in the ordinary course, have confirmed this 

 estimate. Mr. Jeans, however, is one of that rare class, a 

 statist, who can clothe his dry facts with interest, without, at 

 the same time, sacrificing anything of their substantial value. 



The first chapter is "Historical and Retrospective," and in it 

 the author goes back to the time, "still within the memory of 

 living men," when the first ton ol merchandise was drawn, and 

 the first passenger conveyed by the first locomotive used on a 

 public railroad. It is but little more, he says, than the " allotted 

 span " since there was but one stage-coach between London and 

 Edinburgh. It started once a month from each of these cities, 

 and took a fortnight to complete the journey. The charge for 



wagon-hire from Leeds to London was thirteen pounds a ton, 

 and to transport goods from Liverpool to Manchester cost forty 

 shillings a ton. 



Such statements as these afford an admirable introduction to 

 the book, and give the formal columns of figures Mr. Jeans has 

 sometimes to use, a dramatic interest they would not otherwise 

 possess. 



The second chapter deals with the important question of 

 " Railway Capital " ; after which the no less interesting subject 

 of " Cost of Railway Construction" is attacked. Leaving the 

 chapters which deal with other branches of the financial aspect 

 of railways, we find the author discoursing on such practical 

 questions as "Locomotive Power," " Economy of Fuel," "Ex- 

 penditure on Permanent Way," "Rolling Stock," and other sub- 

 jects of this nature. American railways and Colonial railways 

 have each a chapter to themselves. The latter had partly 

 appeared in the form of a paper read at the Colonial and Indian 

 Exhibition last year. Some collateral subjects are introduced, 

 such as " The Extent of Internal Commerce," the " Cost of 

 Labour," and the work terminates with a valuable appendix, 

 containing a very full chronology of railway events in the United 

 Kingdom. 



It can hardly be expected that, in a work containing such a 

 vast array of facts and figures as that under consideration, some 

 errors have not crept in ; but we must leave it to sharper eyes 

 than ours to discover them. It may, however, we think, be 

 safely surmised that with an experienced and accomplished 

 statist, such as Mr. Jeans is known to be, such errors, if they 

 exist at all, will be remarkably rare. 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 



PROFESSOR MAX MULLER gave, on the 17th of March, at the 

 Royal Institution, the first of a course of three successive Thurs- 

 day afternoon lecliues on " The Science of Thought." To all present 

 was given a copy of the preface of the lecturer's lorthcoming book upon 

 the same subject. The lecturer referred at the outset of his prelection 

 to former courses which he had given there, especially on the science of 

 language, dating as far back as a quarter of a century. He began by 

 explaining what at that early epoch was the meaning of comparative 

 philology, which was then quite an unknown quantity, even to a highly 

 cultivated audience like those wont to listen to Faraday and Young, but 

 which was now fairly well known as an integral branch of classical 

 learning, and which it was well understood was not to be confounded 

 with the science of language. The former was the means, the latter 

 the end. Much progress had been made of late in the stuJy of the 

 phonetic, grammatical, and syntactical structure of language, but there 

 was still much work to be done. At the same time the science of lan- 

 guage had a higher purpose — namely, to discover the secrets of thought 

 in the labyrinth of languages, and more particularly toexplain the reaction 

 of language on thought which was what was comprehended under the 

 general name of mythology. The science of language, in fact, was a 

 telescope for watching the movements of our thoughts, and a micro- 

 scope to discover the piimary cells in which our concepts lay hidden. 

 Language was formerly deemed so complicated and wonderful that it 

 seemed impossible to ascribe to it a merely human origin. No doubt 

 the wealth of language was very vast. English had been shown to 

 comprise a quarter of a million words, and even the comparatively 

 in'antile prattle of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego claimed more 

 than 32,000 words This showed how wrong a view Darwin took ol 

 the intellectual capacities of the lowest of all savages, while at the same 

 time it reflected the highest credit on the philosopher that, as the lec- 

 turer showed by reading an extract from a letter addressed by that great 

 man to himself, he at last owned his mistake. But though the wealth 

 of words was apparently so great, the stream could be traced back to a 

 few rivulets of elements, partly material and partly formal. The natu- 

 ral elements of language, or the so-called predicative roots, had been 

 reduced to about Soo, and the formal or demonstrative elements to 

 about three score. With these elements everything existing in human 

 speech could be accounted for. Roots must fulfil three conditions. 

 They must be intelligible, not only to the speaker, but to all who lis- 

 tened to him ; they must be embodied in a definite number of conson- 

 ants and vowels ; lastly, they must express general concepts. These 

 three conditions were fulfilled if, with Noire, we accepted a root as the 

 darnor concomitans of primitive acts performed by peoples in common. 

 Roots received their conceptional character from the fact that primitive 

 men were more conscious of their acts as the same, though slightly 

 changed and repeated again and again. This was the first historical 

 step leading towards a concept, or a comprehension of many things as 

 one. The Soo roots, however, had been reduced to a much smaller 

 number of concepts — namely, 120 — and with these 120 concepts and a 

 few demonstrative elements the whole of our language could be ac- 

 counted for. As the 72 chemical elements of the universe accounted 



