352 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
a well-arranged introduction to astronomy, wliicli can be profitably read 
by those familiar with the elements of mathematics, and which contains 
reference to most of the recent discoveries. On some points M. Boillot’s ex- 
planations are remarkably clear and intelligible ; this is especially true of that 
unpleasant stumbling-block to the beginner — the 'precession of the equinoxes. 
The chapter on the constitution of the sun shows that the author is a careful 
and efficient compiler ; containing as it does references to the investigations 
of Faye, Lockyer, Carrington, Thompson, Spserer, and Chacomac. 
SUMMER RAMBLES * 
M R. LEO GRINDON appears to possess a most wonderful aptitude for 
the production of books. Here is another offshoot of his fertile mind, 
or rather pen, for we fear the mental power expended on “ Summer Rambles” 
has been of that limited character which tedious summer walks appear to 
develop, and for which the author’s previous volumes have been so eminently 
remarkable. The little nicely-printed and sparsely-illustrated volume, which 
the local publishers hope to “subscribe” extensively, is veritably a wind- 
bag of the very worst type. Honestly it must be said that everything 
valuable it contains might be advantageously compressed into a dozen pages. 
A more flagrant instance of book-making has seldom come under our notice. 
If our readers will be good enough to take a slice of a local Directory, a few 
descriptions of those country hotels in which the surrounding scenery is so 
graphically painted by “ mine host,” half a dozen pages of some very popular 
botany, and if he will dilute the whole with the highly elegant and unorna- 
mented (!) language of a peripatetic panorama lecturer, he will be able to ascer- 
tain to what species of work Mr. Leo Grindon’s belongs. It purports to be a 
guide for the use of the gude folk of Manchester, who desire to indulge the 
pursuit of what a writer made immortal by the late Father Prout called 
the “ botany of the boreens.” It aims at a description of the pretty country 
places in the vicinity of the great cotton city, and of the natural objects of 
interest to be seen in them. But all this might have been done in a far shorter 
space than Mr. Grindon’s ambition seems to have required, and without the 
painfully wishy-washy maunderings about purling brooks and murmuring 
streams with which the book abounds. There is hardly a grain of scientific fact 
in the huge desert of drivelling in which the author so inhumanly leaves his 
reader. There is another matter, also, on which we must take Mr. Grindon 
to task. He has been at too much pains to describe the advantages of certain 
hotels. There was no need, in a work intended for the encouragement of 
natural history field-studies, to devote a frontispiece to the Palace Hotel, 
Southport. No one would dream for a moment of accusing so respectable a 
gentleman as our author of puffery in a matter of this kind. Of course the 
very notion is ridiculous. Is it not, however, a pity to find a scientific man 
“ Summer Rambles in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire.” 
By Leo H. Grindon. Manchester : Palmer & Howe. 1866. 
