946 Notices respecting New Books. 



Major P. A. MacMahon in his Introduction to Combinatory 

 Analysis (Camb. Univ. Press, 7/6) gives an outline of the easier 

 parts of the theory of Combinatory Analysis expounded in his- 

 larger volumes of 1915-1916. This small treatise treats the theory 

 of symmetric functions and builds the general results in the theory 

 of distributions on it. It is a valuable and interesting book. 



Modern Analysis. Third Edition. By Prof. E. T. Whtttaker,. 

 E.R.S., and Prof. Gr. N. Watson, E.R.S. Cambridge University- 

 Press. 40s. 



There is no great change in the new edition of Modern 

 Analysis. The authors have added an entirely new chapter on 

 Lame's functions which should prove of great value, and the 

 chapter on Fourier Series has been rearranged in the interests of 

 the large number of applied mathematicians who use this book. 

 It is notoriously difficult to please two masters and to avoid 

 slipping between two stools : but as the book is undoubtedly of 

 great value to applied mathematicians, a small sop of this kind is 

 probably not out of place. There are no new features to remark 

 on beyond these, except the price. 



The Experimental Basis of Chemistry. By Ida Ereund. Edited 

 by A. Hutchinson and M. Beatrice Thomas. Cambridge 

 University Press. Pp. xvi -j- 408. Price 30s. net. 



Miss Ida Ereund, who died in 1914, taught chemistry at 

 Newnham College from 1887 to 1912 with well-known success. 

 Her book The Study of Chemical Composition caused her name to 

 be familiar to students who had never been to Cambridge, and was 

 received with well-deserved praise. The present work embodies- 

 ten chapters left by her in manuscript, which have been admirably 

 edited by two of her friends. We are told that the book was 

 planned to consist of twenty chapters, but the portion published is 

 complete in itself. It shows remarkable originality of treatment, 

 and utters a vigorous protest against the very conventional way in 

 which experiment is dealt with in too many of the laboratory 

 manuals for students. It is an elementary book, but teachers and 

 advanced students will get many valuable suggestions from the 

 perusal of what is a sound, clear, critical, and logical account of the 

 fundamental principles of chemistry. It appears from the sub- 

 title; that the book was not primarily intended to be worked right 

 through in the laboratory, but any student with time and patience- 

 to do so would acquire a very good knowledge of the principles of 

 the science. The book forms an excellent memorial to a teacher 

 who, as the editors say, " was richly endowed with the critical 

 faculty, keenly sensitive to fallacious reasoning, and quick to 

 detect an unwarrantable assumption." 



