REVIEWS. 
77 
of sewer gas are also shown in section, and from each source of infection 
curls a ghastly sinuous blue line ending in a forked tail like that of a goblin. 
We never see the body of this skeleton in the cupboard, this domestic demon, 
but his scorpion-like tail encircles meat, milk, invalid, and baby alike. If 
the thing were not strictly true it would be ludicrous, but every plate is given 
on sound authority ; in most cases name and place are duly recorded as means 
of authentication. Mr. Teale is evidently terribly in earnest. He prac- 
tically apologises for his method in the familiar quotation from Horace 
about eyes and ears. But his conviction is none the less contagious ; and 
many a father or mother, after seeing this book (it does not need reading) 
will set his house in order, in terror of the Visionary Tail. 
W. H. Stone. 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE.* 
T HIS can hardly be called a new book, since the lectures on which it is 
founded were delivered as far back as 1874. But in matter as well as in 
style it retains a certain freshness which will long prevent its becoming an 
old one. 
The method of its genesis is plainly indicated in the Preface. u The 
following Lectures were given in the Spring of 1874, at the desire of a 
number of friends — mainly professional men — who wished to obtain in this 
way a notion of the chief advances made in Natural Philosophy since their 
student days. 
“ The only special requests made to me were that I should treat fully the 
modern history of energy, and that I should publish the Lectures verbatim .” 
To the history of energy, its conservation, dissipation, transformation, 
sources and transference, after some introductory remarks, six Lectures are 
devoted. The transformation of heat into work gives origin to an excellent, 
lucid, and untechnical account of Carnot’s ideas. Radiation, absorption, 
and spectrum analysis occupy three chapters ; the conduction of Heat, with 
Eourier’s Theory, furnish the eleventh ; and the last two of the thirteen 
consider the intimate structure of matter. 
Anything like mathematical analysis and even the abstruser parts of 
scientific terminology seem to be rigidly excluded; on the other hand 
illustrative experiments of the most apposite and striking kind are freely 
scattered through the book. 
Sir William Thomson’s high claims as a discoverer are justly insisted on. 
The charm of the book is the extreme neatness with which difficult ideas 
are brought home to the reader, without any sacrifice of accuracy. A boy 
in the upper forms of a good school could follow every word, and would 
thence suck more intellectual nourishment than from “ Science in a Teacup, ’ r 
or “ Little Experiments for Little Nuisances,” and the like. 
W. H. Stone. 
* u Lectures on some recent advances in Physical Science.” By P. G. Pait. 
M.A., &c. Sm. 8vo, pp. 337. London : Macmillan & Co., 1876. 
