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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
nothing of elementary mathematics can learn a great deal of astronomy ; 
enough, indeed, to set up as original workers, should they possess one of 
Mr. Browning’s popular silvered-mirror telescopes. “ The Midnight Sky” 
gives us an account not merely of the groups of stars which fill the firma- 
ment, but also of the constitution of the sun, the planets large and small, 
the cometary bodies, the nebulae and those curious things the meteors, which 
a few years ago were looked on as mere erratic cosmical matter, but which, 
thanks to the labours of Proctor and others, we know now to form a huge 
system which has its own definite periods of revolution, and which may 
perhaps one day consolidate into a sphere. Indeed Mr. Dunkin’s book is a 
general treatise on astronomy ; but it differs from the works now familiar to 
readers, by the possession of a multitude of beautiful engravings, so that he 
“ who runs may read,” or if he is too careless to read, may learn a great deal 
from the mere pictures themselves, these being so numerous that, as Dickens 
says of a certain house with many gables, there are more than a lazy man 
might care to count. 
The most original feature in the work is the plan on which the star-maps 
are constructed. These are, as it were, little midnight photographs of the 
sky. Fancy it possible, some of these bright, cold, clear nights, to go 
up in a balloon with Mr. Coxwell, and then to take a photograph of the 
sky above, and of London beneath, and you have some notion of Mr. 
Dunkin’s pictures of the heavens. But you should do more than this, you 
should go up and perform the operation every month, and do it both here 
and in the southern hemisphere in order to obtain all the handsome views 
he has given us of the sky. This, however, does not sum the contents. 
The author has figured and given the history separately of the leading 
celestial bodies and their phenomena, and with this he has filled that part of 
his book not already taken up by the midnight sky proper. In style, the 
author’s descriptions leave little to be desired, and in the general tone of his 
teaching we have no fault to find save when in the end of the book — it is 
only in the end, and it is a special chapter which may be skipped — he has 
given us a little of that Bridgewater writing which has done so much to make 
really thoughtful men become irreligious. Of course this is not its ten- 
dency, but most assuredly it is its inevitable result. 
MILLER’S ORGANIC CHEMISTRY.* 
“ Breathes there a man ” who has ever entered a laboratory and yet has 
failed to recognise the sterling value of Dr. W. Allen Miller’s great three- 
volumed, exquisitely-printed and carefully-annotated treatise on chemistry ? 
If there does, then all we can say is that we blush for his ignorance and pity 
him for his misfortune. Dr. Miller’s work, large though it be, is, we feel as- 
sured, the student’s best friend in chemistry, and its author takes care that it 
• u Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical.” By William 
Allen Miller, M.D., D.C.L., V!P.R.S. 4th edition, Part III. Organic 
Chemistry. London: Longmans, 1809. 
