428 
REVIEWS. 
THE, SCIENCE OE SOUND.* 
HPHOSE w]io witnessed the admirable series of experiments given by 
-A. Professor Tyndall, in bis late course of lectures on Sound, will be glad 
to learn that the facts and theories then brought under their notice have 
been reproduced in a work whose method, as a scientific handbook, is only 
excelled by the grace and terseness of its literary style, and the clearness and 
abundance of its illustrations. Very few of us have paid attention to the 
science of acoustics, and the reason of this is, we apprehend, the circum- 
stance that our teachers, through ignorance or design, have universally 
passed the subject over as one of little interest, and of still less scientific im- 
portance. Even a cursory glance at Dr. Tyndall’s book will convince the 
student that a splendid field of research and experiment has been left un- 
noticed by writers on Natural Philosophy. The phenomena of Sound offer 
for solution some of the most complex problems which the whole range of 
physics present ; and the laws which regulate them, display an order and 
correlation unsurpassed in any department of Natural Science. The author 
of the present work does not pretend to offer many original views upon the 
fact3 of Sound-Science, his object having been rather to bring together all 
that is known concerning the laws which regulate vibration, and to discuss 
the curious facts connected therewith, which have been recorded by various 
continental writers. This he has done most thoroughly, and, in addition, he 
has brought his own powers, as our greatest and most successful experimenter, 
to illustrate theories which without this aid would have been difficult of 
comprehension to ordinary readers. As performed in the leetures, some of 
the author’s experiments had the rare quality of bringing conviction home 
to the minds of his pupils : as gone through on paper, in the book before us, 
they have lost little of their original force. The woodcuts intercalated in 
the text are so numerous and well executed, and the explanations are so 
lucid and forcible, that no well-educated man can fail to make himself 
acquainted with acoustics, if he has a real desire to learn. The book is 
divided into eight chapters, in accordance with the number of lectures 
originally delivered, and each chapter is followed by a summary, which will 
be found useful by the student, whom it enables, in a brief space of time, to 
travel over ground whose features might be otherwise forgotten. We have 
* “Sound.” A Series of Eight Lectures, delivered at the Poyal Institu- 
tion of Great Britain. By John Tyndall, LL.D., E.R.S. London : Longmans. 
1867. 
