412 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
301 warning messages were issued from London in the course of seven 
years. Seventy-two per cent, of these warnings were followed by gales, 
while in only three cases did the storm outrun the message.” Although this 
result is manifestly better than any that has been attained with regard to 
storms affecting this country, still we may hope that further experience will 
tend to render our own storm-signals more productive of good than they are 
at present ; although Mr. Scott says, on p. 144, that “ we are able to 
maintain a general success of nearly eighty pel* cent, for our warnings ” — a 
circumstance which will justify those who maintained that the Meteorolo- 
gical Office was wrong when at first they discontinued Admiral Fitzroy’s 
system. 
And with this subject we have come to the end of “Weather Charts and 
Storm Warnings,” which we must pronounce, in conclusion, to be one of 
the most interesting and instructive volumes that has reached our hands 
for a very long time. 
THE MOON.* 
nnHIS book was undertaken with the view of promoting the study of 
-L Selenography. Unfortunately it is so large and costly a work as to 
be calculated to act as a deterrent from that rather diy, because heretofore 
unproductive pursuit. It was very well for Mr. Nasmyth to produce a 
costly book on the moon, because his work was intended for all who take 
interest in the wonders of astronomy ; and, adorned as it was with many very 
elaborate and beautiful photographs, could not fail to be generally attrac- 
tive. But a work like the present can only meet the wants of a very 
limited section of the astronomical public, and probably only a small por- 
tion of those even who take special interest in selenography would care to 
purchase a book whose retail price is a guinea and a half. We fear, 
therefore, that Mr. Neison may have to wait long before the second edition 
referred to in the preface of this work is called for, unless indeed he has 
prudently restricted the first edition to a few hundreds instead of the cus- 
tomary thousand, or the larger numbers to which publishers extend the 
first editions of more attractive works. 
Regarding this work as a general treatise, to which character it in some 
degree aspires, we must confess we cannot perceive its raison d'etre. It 
gives the history of lunar research too sketchily to be of much value in that 
respect, and only touches upon the peculiarities of the lunar motions, with- 
out a full account of which a general treatise on the moon is like Hamlet 
without the Prince of Denmark. Mr. Neison enters into a well-meant but 
perfectly futile attempt to show that those astronomers have been altogether 
mistaken who have asserted that the moon u has no atmosphere of any 
appreciable importance,” and generally that the moon is at present an 
utterly unfit abode for any kind of life, animal or vegetable* And here we 
cannot but notice a very objectionable feature of the work — the cavalier, we 
* “ The Moon : and the Condition and Configurations of its Surface.” 
By Edmund Neison, F.R.A.S. London : Longmans. 1876. 
