NEW BOOKS, WITH SHORT NOTICES. 
Ill 
than referred to, but farther on a series of spectroscopic images are 
given, without, however, any mention of the improvements which 
are due to the labours of Messrs. Sorhy, Palmer, and Browning. 
Then the subject of immersion lenses, which is one of considerable 
importance at the present time, is dismissed in about ten lines, 
which are the sum-total of two separate paragraphs. The mode 
of defining “ angular aperture,” “ penetration,” and “ definition ” 
is a bad one, and it seems to us to be perfectly unintelligible, 
at least to an amateur. The author shows also an ignorance of 
the attempts that have been made, and successfully made, to define 
certain of Nobert’s bands ; for he states as a marvellous fact that “ it is 
said that Hartnack’s immersion system No. 10 and oblique light has 
resolved the lines on the 15th band.” Is he unaware that Colonel 
Woodward, his fellow-countryman, has already clearly made out and 
photographed even the 19th band of Nobert? As to orthography, we 
notice many errors, more especially in regard to names, some of them 
being misspelt in as many as two or three different varieties. Another 
error, which ought not to have existed, as it has been corrected in this 
country long since, is as to the existence of Bathybius. The chapter 
on biology also furnishes us with many blunders, a few of which are 
the following : there is an absolute contradiction as to the nature of 
cell-life ; in one instance it is the substance of the cell, in another it 
is the nucleus alone that possesses the power of reproduction. The 
divisions of organic life into Animals, Vegetables, and Fungi is mani- 
festly absurd, and equally so is the idea, put forth in solid earnest, 
that Bacteria are the germs of fungi ; finally, the Pod liras are wrongly 
placed. 
The chapter on pathology is in great part of no interest whatever 
to the microscopist at all. What, for example, will he think of long 
paragraphs about the examination of urine for sugar, albumen, and so 
forth. These things are very well in their way, but they should not 
be thrust into a treatise on microscopic work. 
There are, so far as we can see, but two good chapters in the work, 
and these are on the microscope in geology, which is a summary of 
David Forbes’s well-known paper in the ‘ Popular Science Review,’ 
with a reproduction of his plate, and on the same instrument in 
chemistry, which is an interesting account of some of the more recent 
results that have been established. These are, so far as we can see, 
the only really good points that this work possesses. 
If we have been perhaps severe in our notice, it has been simply 
because we felt that the book heartily merited an acute critique, and 
because we should wish to see that habit of mere book-making, 
which has of late years become so huge a plague, most seriously 
diminished. 
