REVIEWS. 
71 
found growing within the district, of which 904 are regarded by the 
authors as truly indigenous ; whilst 319 mosses, 232 lichens, 75 liverworts, 
and 388 fungi have also been recorded as natives. To the student of bota- 
nical topography this work of Messrs. Davis and Lees, with its descriptions 
of physical conditions and lists of peculiar plants, cannot fail to be of interest ; 
while the latter will be most welcome to collecting botanists, whose numbers 
are by no means inconsiderable among the handicraftsmen of the West 
Riding. The second volume, which will treat of the climatology and flora 
of the Riding and their connection, will add very considerably to the value 
of this treatise on its botanical topography. 
THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.* 
T HE necessity for works of a constructive and methodic character, in an 
age occupied with the incessant gathering of facts, has already been 
adverted to in these pages. What Mr. Skertchley proposed to do for cos- 
mogony Mr. Gore attempts in the cause of human thought. He proposes 
11 to describe the nature of original scientific research, the chief personal 
conditions of success in its pursuit, the general methods by which discoveries 
are made in physics and chemistry, and tbe causes of failure ; and thus to 
elucidate as far as possible the special mental conditions and processes by 
means of which the mind of man ascends from the known to the unknown 
in matters of science.” 
As a known expert in physical research he has an undoubted right to 
contribute to the long list of such works which have sprung from the philo- 
sophic mind in various ages. First among these comes the “ Organon ” of 
Aristotle, a treatise to which its shrewd and practical author gave the 
familiar name, inasmuch as it was to be a “ tool ” or “ implement ” in the 
hands of mental workers, by means of which they should dig out truth. It 
once and for all showed the capabilities of the deductive method of logic in 
averting error. Many ages after arose a New Organon, a tool adapted to the 
changed aspect of men’s minds, and the dawning of the inductive method, 
carried only of late to its highest development in the great work of Mill. 
But perhaps the nearest kinsmen of a book like this are the “ Regulse 
Philosophandi ” of Newton; near, because they too were concerned with 
physical inquiry ; and nearer still because as rules they presupposed an art, 
and did not aim at the foundation of a new science. 
There can be no doubt, as the writer says, that “ an art of scientific dis- 
covery is much more possible now than it was in the time of Lord Bacon, 
and is fast becoming more so, and that the process of scientific discovery 
can even now be much more completely reduced to order and rule than is 
generally supposed.” It depends on “ a combination of experiment and 
logical inference,” the latter of which has been “ insufficiently studied, the 
success achieved having, therefore, been attributed too much to accident, to 
* “The Art of Scientific Discovery, or the General Conditions and Methods 
of Research in Physics and Chemistry.” By G. Gore, LL.D., F.R.S. 
Sm. 8vo, pp. 648. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1878. 
