1871.] Notices of Boohs. 259 



The Student's Guide to the Practice of Measuring and Valuing 

 Artificers' Works. By E. Wyndham Tarn, M.A., Architect. 

 Lockwood and Co. 

 This work, re-edited from Mr. Dobson's " Student's Guide to 

 the Practice of Measuring and Valuing," contains a great deal 

 of fresh matter explanatory to the student of the technicalities 

 and modes of construction employed in the several trades. 

 Mensuration, well-sinking, excavating, bricklaying, carpentry, 

 and masonry ; and indeed all the branches of the building trade 

 are fully gone into. The work is well indexed, and arranged to 

 facilitate reference. Tables of constants of labour render the 

 valuing of work done easy to the inexperienced in the trade, and 

 make the book of exceeding use to all who have to deal with their 

 own workmen. 



Microscopic Objects Figured and Described. By John Martin, 

 Honorary Secretary to the Maidstone and Mid-Kent Natural 

 History Society. Pp. 114; 97 Plates. Van Voorst, 1870. 

 This work consists of a series of 194 lithographs, interleaved with 

 short descriptions of the objects represented, and occasional hints 

 as to mounting, illumination, &c. The objects are represented 

 as filling the field of the microscope, and occupy circles of 

 i\ inches diameter. The figures are evidently the work of one 

 accustomed to microscopical observation, but the execution is, 

 with very few exceptions, extremely coarse (Fig. 46, seed of 

 Eccremocarpus, for instance). The insect illustrations are 

 evidently drawn from preparations made after the usual manner 

 of those who mount objects for sale in balsam, in which muscles, 

 viscera, &c, are carefully removed by alkaline maceration, and 

 little else left but chitinous and membranous structures. In 

 Fig. 129, tongue of the house cricket, the beautiful delicacy of the 

 pseudo-tracheae is wholly wanting. The proboscis of the blow-fly 

 (Fig. 151) is taken from the popular mutilated and compressed 

 specimen, and for the purpose of perpetuating this object, which 

 has done much to give false views respecting the structure of the 

 oral appendages of the insect, careful directions are given for 

 preparing it. The most useful portion of the work is the short 

 appendix, which contains some plain and simple directions for 

 mounting and preserving objects. 



Elementary Treatise on Natural Philosophy. By A. Privat 

 Deschanel, formerly Professor of Physics in the Lycee Louis- 

 le-Grand ; Translated and Edited, with extensive additions, 

 by J. D. Everett, M.A., D.C.L., Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy in the Queen's College, Belfast. In four parts : 

 Part I. Blackie and Son, London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, 

 1870. 239 pp. Medium 8vo. 

 This work is the first portion of the translation of M. Deschanel's 

 " Traite Elementaire de Physique," and includes Mechanics, 



