686 
Analyses oj Books. 
[November, 
Manual of Telegraphy . By W. Williams. London : Longmans, 
Green, and Co. 
This work, as the Preface informs us, has been compiled by 
order of the Diredtor-General of the Indian Telegraph Depart- 
ment. Its objeCts are to afford the Staff a means of self- 
education in practical telegraphy ; to serve as a primer and 
companion to the Department's testing instructions ; for the 
instruction of probationers, and as a text-book of ready reference. 
Like the vast majority of English manuals in any department of 
Science, it is based on the substance of “ papers set ” at general 
examinations. In its successive sections it considers the defini- 
tion of technical terms, batteries, instruments, telegraphic cir- 
cuits, detection and removal of faults, the testing of batteries, of 
lines, earths, lightning conductors, instruments and connections, 
besides an Appendix treating of the laws and principles by which 
the conduCt of eleCtrical currents may be understood, and on 
which the solutions of formulae are based ; also eleCtrical formulae 
and their solutions, and a table of natural sines and tangents. 
The work is clearly written, well illustrated, and perspicuously 
arranged. 
Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South 
Wales for 1884. Vol. XVIII. Edited by A. Liversidge, 
F.R.S. Sydney : Thomas Richards. London : Tri'ibner 
and Co. 
From the Anniversary Address delivered by the President we 
learn that of the prizes offered by the Society, for the best 
Memoirs on certain specified subjects, only two have as yet been 
awarded. Of the nine Memoirs sent in last year none were 
found satisfactory. It is to be regretted’that, in a country where 
so much remains to be discovered, there should not be a greater 
zeal for research. 
It appears also that the Society made such a donation to the 
funds of the Zoological Station established on the coast (a true 
Aquarium, like the one at Naples) as to entitle it to nominate a 
worker in the Laboratory, but no one applied for this privilege ! 
If we consider that on the east coast of Australia there must be 
far greater scope for investigations in Marine Zoology than at 
Naples, this apathy is much to be regretted. If three publica- 
tions are needed to chronicle the work done at Naples, six ought 
at least to be filled with the records of New South Wales 
researches. 
