i873-j • Notices of Books. 529 



are thus treated in accordance with strict inductive philosophy, 

 without losing anything of literary refinement or readable sim- 

 plicity, the other subjects, commonly supposed to be more 

 strictly scientific, are by no means presented in the bare skeleton 

 style of pedantic disquisition which is popularly supposed to be 

 the truly scientific style, but are exhibited to the reader in their 

 truly natural forms, enveloped in the rounded and tinted integu- 

 ments of a polished literature, wTiich appeals to the emotional — 

 the poetic faculties of the reader, as well as to the purely intel- 

 lectual powers. In reading these we seem to be listening to a 

 voice that comes genially across a dinner table rather than coldly 

 from a professorial chair. 



With these characteristics, we have no doubt this collection of 

 11 Critiques and Addresses " will be as popular and usefully 

 influential as the " Lay Sermons " that were published three 

 years ago. 



Reprint of Papers on Electro-Statics and Magnetism. By Sir 

 William Thomson, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.S.E., 

 Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, and Professor of 

 Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. London : 

 Macmillan and Co. 1872. 

 A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. By James Clerk 

 Maxwell, M.A., LL.D. Edin., F.R.SS. London and Edin- 

 burgh, Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor 

 of Experimental Physics in the University of Cambridge. 

 2 vols. (Clarendon Press Series.) London : Macmillan 

 and Co. 1873. 

 Those amongst our readers who are acquainted with periodical 

 scientific literature will find in Sir W. Thomson's " Reprints " 

 much they have already studied and much that will be new to 

 them. But the first idea one obtains from the volume of nearly 

 six hundred pages is the immense amount of unpublished work 

 implied. It is a characteristic of physical science memoirs, and 

 a reason for their scarcity, that they represent not only so much 

 work done upon paper, but long and tedious labours in the 

 laboratory, endless disappointments from having taken the wrong 

 road, and turnings back which have certainly served the purpose 

 of rendering surer the way for future travellers, but wearying in 

 the extreme to the explorer. Another surprise is the practical 

 results that may accrue from purely mathematical deductions, 

 but of which, upon closer inspection, the secret turns out to be 

 the logical and comprehensive argument involved. Such views 

 are encouraging, especially in the science of electricity. We 

 were fast growing into the habit of looking to Germany for our 

 mathematical investigation of electro-statical and electro-mag- 

 netical science, and this not because these papers were unknown, 



