﻿Royal Society. 65 



merit. We shall not, we trust, be deemed to exceed our legitimate 

 province when we say that, while the entire volume has received 

 admirable supervision from both of the gentlemen to whose care it 

 nas been entrusted, most of the labour has fallen to the share of Mr. 

 Watts, a chemist whose long experience and high literary ability 

 have conferred on the work a completeness and finish it could not 

 otherwise have possessed. The result of his attention is a faithful 

 portrait of modern dogmatic chemistry. Hereafter (when dynamical 

 theory shall have displaced or greatly modified the atomic and other 

 statical speculations-) we may look upon this picture with regret, but 

 its truth we shall never be able to deny. The science is a prisoner in 

 the enchanted castle of the Absolute, and still awaits some knight 

 to rescue and deliver her. 



The object of Professor Guthrie's little book is sufficiently evident 

 from its titlepage, and does not call for a length}*- notice on our part. 

 The writer's aim has been to produce a students' manual which shall 

 " contain all (and but little more than all) that is required " for the 

 chemical branch of the Matriculation Pass Examination of the Uni- 

 versity of London. We have already commented upon the associa- 

 tion of physical with chemical subjects in the same volume, and can- 

 not but believe that, at no distant date, the subject of Heat will be 

 placed in its true position among the subjects selected for that ex- 

 amination by the Senate. That it is not so placed at present, con- 

 stitutes, however, Professor Guthrie's justification for the course he 

 has pursued. The work itself is concise, decided, and clear. The 

 nomenclature (" chloride of silver," " carbonate of calcium," &c.) in 

 the chemical part is open to objection as not being sufficiently mo- 

 dern ; and the mode of calculation under "Expansion" (§ 18) in 

 the physical part might undoubtedly have been simplified. But 

 these blemishes do not seriously affect the general character of the 

 manual, which, as we have said, possesses the characteristics which 

 are most valued in such publications. 



X. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from vol. xxxvi. p. 394.] 



June 18, 1868. — Lieut. -General Sabine, President, in the Chair. 



rflHE following communications were read : — 



J. "An Account of certain Experiments on Aneroid Barometers, 

 made at Kew Observatory, at the expense of the Meteorological 

 Committee." By B. Stewart. 



In judging of the value of an instrument such as an aneroid, it is 

 not the mere extent of difference between its indications and those of 

 Phil Mag. S. 4. Vol. 37. No. 246. Jan. 1869. F 



