[ 388 ] 



XLVJ . Notices respecting New Books. 



The Orbs around ns : a Series of familiar Essays on the Moon and 



Planets, Meteors and Comets, the Sun, and coloured Pairs of Suns. 



By Richard A. Proctor, B.A. (Camb.) London : Longmans, 



Green, and Co. 1872. 

 T^HERE are two classes of scientific authors — one consisting of men 

 -'- who chronicle the results of their researches obtained by the aid 

 of observation or experiment, the other of men who, gathering up 

 these results, present them to the public in a pleasing and attractive 

 form. In each of these classes we find men who are justly entitled 

 to be regarded as " the leaders of scientific thought," and from the 

 general character of the now numerous works that have issued from 

 the pen of Mr. Proctor, the position of " leader oi popular astronomic 

 thought" may be unhesitatingly accorded to him. 



The work before us contains a series of essays originally published 

 in ' St. Paul's,' * Eraser's,' and the * Cornhill' Magazines, on spec- 

 trum-analysis, the habitabiiity of the planets Venus, Mars, and 

 Jupiter, meteor and meteor-systems, comets and their tails, the 

 sun's corona, and the colours of double stars. Most of the subjects 

 are treated in a lucid and familiar style, particularly that of spectrum- 

 analysis, under the title of '*The Gamut of Light," and also that 

 of ** Meteor Systems." Musical readers who possess an acquaint- 

 ance with the science of sound will have no difiiculty in following 

 our author in his exposition of the phenomena of the spectrum, ** The 

 Gamut of Light ; " and his exposition of the connexion between 

 meteor-systems and comets will at once commend itself to the 

 thoughtful reader who can appreciate the diflSculty that must have 

 been experienced by the eminent mathematicians who worked out 

 the orbits, and who showed the close connexion between the two 

 great meteor-systems now known to belong to the solar system, and 

 the two comets with which they are intimately associated. Occa- 

 sionally our author departs from his more popular style, indulging 

 in one somew^hat more abstruse, particularly in the enunciation of 

 theories which he has originated ; and we find in several instances 

 a spice of the fanciful, bordering on the sensational, as in such 

 titles as " the planet of love," " the planet of war," and a " minia- 

 ture sun," — also in the very frequent use of the word " startling/* 

 as if the sober realities of science were so far removed from the 

 general track of ordinary thought that the unravelling of the 

 symmetrically woven web of natural knowledge should be accom- 

 panied by sensations difi^erent from that of a deep feeling of admira- 

 tion at the power given to man to read, mark, learn, inwardly digest, 

 and understand the great book of Nature spread open before him. 



Viewing the book as the production of a recognized leader of 

 popular astronomic thought, we have marked a few passages in 

 which we apprehend the author has fallen short of his high vocation. 

 Speaking of the attempt to secure clearness of illustration with 

 strict scientific exactness, he says, " Scientific exactness can come 

 afterwards," &c. In one or two instances the author has followed 

 his own rule (as we conceive) detrimentally. He tells us that Dr. 



