1879J 
Notices of Books. 
*93 
commonly to be met with. We find, in the first place, a full 
translation of Prof. Holmgren’s memoir on colour-blindness — a 
subjedt which is now attracting general attention, from its 
bearing upon the corredt interpretation of signals by railway 
officials and sailors. For the detection of this defeCt he gives a 
decided preference to Seebeck’s method, an assortment of Berlin 
wools serving as test-objeCts. There is another interesting essay 
on the same subject, by Mr. Jos. Henry. 
Next follow translations from the “ Transactions of the Geneva 
Society of Physics and Natural History.” There are, further, 
very valuable papers on the antiquities and ethnology of various 
parts of the Western Hemisphere ; notes on the “ History and 
Climate of New Mexico,” in which that region, on the faith of a 
considerable body of statistical evidence, is recommended as a 
sanitarium for the consumptive. Dr. R. H. Coolidge is quoted 
as saying that “ the worst possible climate for a consumptive is 
one with a long-continued high temperature and a high dew- 
point.” Yet we have heard of not a few cases of incipient 
consumption where great benefit has been experienced from a 
residence in Sierra Leone. 
Dr. Weismann’s paper on the change of the Axoloth to an 
Amblystoma is given in full, together with an account of the 
experiments performed by Marie v. Chauvin. 
The volume is completed by a number of short meteorological 
memoirs. 
We notice in this “ Report,” as in fcrmer issues, a peculiarity 
which greatly detradts from its utility. The index gives merely 
the headings of the memoirs or articles, omitting all details, — a 
serious defedt in a work containing a mass of information at 
once so important and so varied. We should beg to suggest 
the publication— say once in ten years— of a general index of 
subjedts. 
A Treatise on Chemistry. By H. E. Roscoe, F.R.S., and C. 
Schorlemmer, F.R.S., Professors of Chemistry in Owens 
College, Manchester. Vol. ii., Metals (Part 1). London : 
Macmillan and Co. 
This volume opens with a consideration of the generic proper- 
ties of the metals. The authors, we find, take a well-founded 
objedtion to the term “ metalloid,” still applied by some writers 
to non-metallic bodies, and insist on the absence of any distindl 
line of demarcation between the two great classes of elementary 
substances, not a few of which are alternately pronounced either 
metallic or non-metallic, according to the point of view whence 
they are considered. The remarks on alloys, though necessarily 
VOL. IX. (N.S.) 
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