62 Notices respecting New Books. 



Sections, his construction, though correct, is of little importance. 

 The author speaks of himself as one whose knowledge of mathe- 

 matics is " somewhat circumscribed." We do not doubt that he 

 has found the composition of the tract a useful exercise ; but the 

 publication of it, we venture to suggest, was entirely unnecessary. 



The Earth Supported by Vapour. By GT. T. Carrtjthehs, M.A., 

 Chaplain of Naypur, India. Nagpur : printed at the Chief 

 Commissioner's Office Press, 187(3. (Pp. 23, 8vo.) 

 We do not doubt that were Professor de Morgan still living he 

 would have found a place for Mr. Carruthers in his Budget of 

 Paradoxes. That he is well qualified for admission will be plain 

 from a brief statement of the object of the tract before us, which 

 the author gives in the following words : — " Sir Isaac Newton 

 discovered a fact which no one now doubts, that the solar system 

 is governed by a law of attraction. He himself held an opinion 

 for a long time that this attraction was not an inherent occult 

 power in matter to attract other matter, but that there might be 

 some physical cause of such apparent attraction. The present 

 paper is written to suggest that the physical cause is the conden- 

 sation of vapour of more or less tenuity intervening between the 

 heavenly bodies and surrounding them" (p. 1). His theory, then, 

 is that gravitation or the weight of bodies is caused by the con- 

 densation of the watery vapour surrounding them. When such 

 a theory as this is propounded, it is hard to know what to say : 

 one might ask what chance there is of wateiy vapour existing 

 in the form of watery vapour in the interplanetary spaces, e. g. 

 in the space between Uranus and Neptune. But perhaps the 

 consideration of our author's reasoning applied to a particular case 

 will throw sufficient light on the subject. Here is his account of 

 the reason of the fall of Newton's famous apple : — " The vapour 

 on the earth's surface is in perfect equilibrium from the various 

 pressures to which it is subject ; but when an apple, broken from 

 its branch, is left unsupported in the air, the vapour between it 

 and the earth cannot support this additional weight . . . there is, 

 therefore, a condensation of the vapour, and the apple falls from 

 the forward push of the vapour above it " (p. 5). Surely our 

 author ought to maintain that the numerical value of the accele- 

 rative effect of gravity is dependent on the reading of the 

 hygrometer ; but why should we expect any sort of consis- 

 tency in a theory, according to which the weight of the body is 

 produced by the condensation of the vapour, and the condensation 

 of the vapour by the weight? Our author having considered the 

 apple, goes on to discuss the case of "a feather in a vacuum in- 

 strument." But it is plainly unnecessary to give any further 

 account of a tract written apparently under the influence of a sort 

 of midsummer madness. 



