Sale by Auction.

By order of Executors of the late Dr. ISAAC ROBERTS,

F.R.S., F.R.A.S.

CROWBOROUGH BEACON,

SUSSEX.

In a magnificent position (about 780 feet above sea level) commanding extensive and delightful views.

MESSRS. LANGRIDGE & FREEMAN have received instructions to SELL by AUCTION, at the Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, E.C., on FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1905, at Two o'clock, the Freehold RESIDENTIAL ESTATE known as "STARFIELD," within about 1 miles of Crowborough Station (L. B. & S.C.R.). It comprises a well-built Detached Residence containing dining room, drawing room, enclosed verandah, five bed and dressing rooms, bath room, and offices, also library, laboratory, Fine Observatory, with revolving hemispherical copper-covered dome, Belvidere tower, &c. There are excellent stone-built Stables, Outbuildings, Greenhouse, Gardener's Cottage, and Entrance Lodge. The Pleasure Grounds studded with ornamental trees, include tennis lawn, productive kitchen garden, and wired-in fruit plantation. The whole property contains 4a. Ir. 31p., a portion of which could be utilised for the erection of additional residences. The property will be so offered as to give the purchaser the opportunity of securing the exceedingly valuable telescopes and other astronomical instruments, &c.

Particulars, &c., of Messrs. ALSOP, STEVENS AND CO., Solicitors, 14 Castle Street, Liverpool; and (with Orders to View) of the Auctioneers, 28 Queen Street, Cheapside, E. C., and Tunbridge Wells.

DARLING'S PATENT

CALORIMETER.

Constructed specially for use in all Steel Works and other Industries that use quantities of Fuel, and for the Engineering and Mining Departments of Colleges and Schools.

PRICE from £2 2s. each.

Giving far better results than those on the market costing four or more times as much.

Descriptive Illustrated Pamphlet post free.

Sole Makers for the Patentee:

A. GALLENKAMP & Co., Ltd., 19 & 21 SUN STREET, FINSBURY, LONDON, E.C.

PHOSPHORESCENT

DIAMONDS

Specially selected for use with Radium Beta Rays, Ultra-violet Light, Sunlight, or Magnesium Light.

ROUGH FRAGMENTS, 5/- each, mounted on black ground with false gem for comparison.

DIAMOND SCREENS, 15/- each

(GLEW'S PATENT).

Showing Scintillations with Alpha Rays, mounted with Radium, complete, 20/- each.

For use with any Pocket Magnifier or Scintilloscope. GLEW'S SCINTILLOSCOPE, with Pitchblende and Polonium, 7/6 each.

F. HARRISON GLEW, 156 Clapham Road, London, S. W.

BROMIDE

of highest power manufactured.

Goods may be returned if not approved of, when money will be refunded. Professional Men, Universities, Schools, &c., allowed special terms.

Mr. Edward Arnold's New Books.

THE EVOLUTION THEORY. By AUGUST WEISMANN,

Professor of Zoology in the University of Freiburg. Translated by Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON and MARGARET THOMSON. Two volumes, Royal 8vo. With many Illustrations. 32s. net.

ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY

By HERBERT HALL TURNER, D.Sc., F.R.S.,
Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford.
With Illustrations and Diagrams. Demy Svo. 10s. 6d. net.

THE CHEMICAL SYNTHESIS
OF VITAL PRODUCTS,

And the Inter-Relations between Organic Compounds. By R. MELDOLA,

Professor of Chemistry in the City and Guilds of London Technical College, Finsbury. Vol. I. Super Royal 8vo. 21s. net.

THE BECQUEREL RAYS

71 & 73 DUKE ST., GROSVENOR SQUARE, W.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.

Mr. Fletcher, the book he has now given us is eminently characteristic, full of his own energetic, practical activity, his love of health, fresh air, and good exercise.

"When I began," he tells us, "I had foolish hopes that it might be a book some boys would take up for amusement, but I soon discovered that twentythree years of teaching had made it impossible for me to do more than smear the powder with a thin layer of jam. We cannot render our dreams of the past (however convinced we may be of their truth) into an intelligible consecutive story."

Here, it seems to us, there is both truth and untruth. Mr. Fletcher's story is, in the main, highly intelligible and adequately consecutive (though one may make an exception of the Anglo-Saxon period, where the author seems at times almost to sink to Milton's notions of "kites and crows "); but how can any true student regard English history as if it were a nauseous drug, to be made palatable by some device? Should one not rather look at it as a storehouse from which a good judgment is needed to draw forth those treasures best suited to the audience one addresses-to the specialist this, to the general reader that, to the working man thing, to the merchant, the professional man, or the politician another?

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Yet though Mr. Fletcher anxiously disclaims the idea of pouring information into anyone, and still more anxiously repudiates the ambition of helping anybody to pass any examination, he has certainly given us here a sketch of living men by a living man, and everyone who is not a pedant, everyone who desires to remember that history is the liferecord of humanity, will be grateful to him for this book. Peculiarly interesting is the picture attempted of an imaginary village in pre-Norman, Norman, and post-Norman times, with its three fields, for wheat, barley, and pasture, its arable strips, its green common or waste, its water-meadows, its pig-grazing woods, its no-man's land, and its bull-croft as successful an attempt to realise the township-manor as any popular treatise has supplied in English of recent years; while a word must also be said in praise of the capital little chapter of geological history, illustrated by a serviceable map of N.W. Europe in the Old Stone age, with which Mr. Fletcher commences.

Mr. Chadwick's "Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions" supplies a useful corrective to the studied vagueness with which Mr. Fletcher treats our English history. Here a careful re-examination of the evidence bearing on some of the most interesting problems of early English history and sociology is attempted with distinct success. The writer's object has especially been to call attention to those branches of the subject which have hitherto suffered from comparative neglect. Thus he has dealt very lightly with Mercian and Northumbrian history because he had nothing of importance to add to previous work; but evidence relating to Kent, Sussex, Essex, and the Hwiccas has been reviewed and re-stated with great care, and with the belief that some fresh results have been attained. The most valuable portion of the

volume seems to be that dealing with the old English monetary system (accompanied by a useful excursus on Frankish coinage, pp. 1-75). And next to this the reader may be recommended to the chapters dealing with the history of the older counties (Kent, &c., pp. 269-307) and with the origin of the nobility (pp. 378-411). Great caution marks all Mr. Chadwick's work, and this quality is never more useful than in such a difficult period as the AngloSaxon. But his treatment of our early charters is also noticeable for its courage; when, even obviously spurious documents, names and titles otherwise unknown are met with, the author, with a daring that will perhaps greatly shock some dogmatists, ventures to think that such names and titles are not necessarily products of imagination. To find one who will say this, and who will appeal moreover for a fairer hearing in the examination of tradition, popular as well as ecclesiastical, is certainly refreshing at the present moment.

STEREOCHEMISTRY.

in

Materialien der Stereochemie. (In Form von Jahresberichten.) Band i., 1894-1898; Band ii., 1899–1902. By C. A. Bischoff. Pp. cxxxvi+1977. (Brunswick Vieweg and Son, 1904.) Price 90 marks. N the course of his reply to a letter from the

Chemical Society of London congratulating him on the completion of the twenty-fifth year of his doctorate, Prof. Emil Fischer writes as follows:

"The time when the fundamental principles of our science were laid down, and when it was possible for the individual investigator to stamp the impress the gigantic structure, which it now represents, each of his own mind upon it, is long since past, and in fellow-worker can only finish some small fragment, or it may be, if he is fortunate, a pretty balcony or a striking turret."

The two ponderous tomes, in which Prof. Bischoff records the advances made in stereochemistry from 1894 to 1902, illustrate in a very striking manner this ever-increasing tendency to specialism in chemical research, which Fischer emphasises in the sentence just quoted.

Although Pasteur, in 1861, by his classical experiments with the isomeric tartaric acids, may be said to have laid the foundation of stereochemistry, the growth of this branch of chemical science was at first slow, since it was not till 1873 that Wislicenus pointed out as a consequence of his work with lactic acid that differences between compounds of identical structure must be ascribed to differences in the spacial arrangement of their atoms within the molecule. The publication in the following year by van't Hoff and Le Bel of their theory of the asymmetric carbon atom gave an immense impulse to experimental work, so that optically active compounds, which in those earlier days were numbered by tens, may now be counted by thousands.

The rapid development of stereochemistry is not, however, restricted to the field of optically active compounds. The researches of Victor Meyer and of Bischoff are fundamental in that branch where the

normal and abnormal courses of many reactions are interpreted from a stereochemical standpoint. Then again, the study of geometrical isomerides, such as substances of the ethylene type with the so-called double linkage between carbon atoms, of polymethylene and heterocyclic compounds, of compounds with a double linkage between a carbon atom and a nitrogen atom, and finally of compounds with a double linkage between two nitrogen atoms, has engaged the attention of many prominent contemporary workers.

The well-known "Handbuch der Stereochemie," by Walden and Bischoff, gives a comprehensive survey of stereochemical literature up to the year 1894. Owing to the rapid developments of the last ten years, however, this work has lately lost much of its initial

value as a source of reference. This defect is now remedied. In the "Materialien der Stereochemie " we have an addendum to the "Handbuch,” the literature of each successive year from 1894 to 1902 being classified in a manner which cannot fail to prove of the utmost service. The subject matter for each year is treated under four sections, namely, general stereochemistry, optical isomerism, geometrical isomerism of optically inactive compounds, and interdependence of spacial relationships and chemical reactions. A brief description of each paper quoted is usually given. The first section on general stereochemistry, in addition to the bibliography of special monographs published during the particular year, embraces references to chemical dynamics, crystallography, spectroscopy, &c., in so far as those subjects have any stereochemical bearing. In the three other sections the papers of more general interest are first quoted; then follow references to the more special papers which are not quoted chronologically, but are conveniently classified according to their subject matter.

The field reviewed in the first subdivision of the fourth section deals with ring systems, and is so vast that, as a rule, only references are given to the innumerable papers quoted. On the other hand, the papers on polymerisation, substitution, addition actions, hydrolysis, &c., included in the same section are dealt with in more detail.

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The general student will find this work unreadable. The author contents himself with the abstract he gives, and hardly ever ventures on any criticism. Little or no attempt is made to differentiate between the important and the unimportant, and in this respect it seems to the present reviewer that more prominence might with advantage have been given to such research as is acknowledged by all to be outstanding. From the point of view of the specialist, however, the work is admirable. Its value lies not so much in the information actually afforded by the abstracts themselves as in the remarkably complete bibliography which it presents. The ardent stereochemist, who in his own particular sphere may be tempted to exclaim, "Zwar weiss ich viel, doch möcht' ich alles wissen," will assuredly find in this work an aid to the realisation of his desire.

A. McK.

A TRAVELLER'S GUIDE TO INDIA. The Imperial Guide to India, including Kashmir, Burma and Ceylon. Pp. xi+244; with illustrations, maps, and plans. (London: John Murray, 1904.) Price 6s. net.

THE large and constantly increasing number of

tourists and sportsmen who visit our Indian Empire during the winter, together with the smaller section who extend their trip so as to include a summer sojourn in Kashmir or some other Himalayan district, must create an extensive demand for a work like the one before us, and the wonder is that an attempt has not been made long ago to supply such a manifest want. In the present volume, which is got up in convenient size and shape for the pocket, and printed in small although clear type, with the chief items in caps. or block type, the anonymous author seems, on the whole, to have discharged a by no means easy task in a thoroughly satisfactory and painstaking manner. Indeed, so far as a somewhat extensive personal experience of the country permits of our forming a judgment, we may say that, as a viaticum and itinerary, which is, of course, its main purpose, the work is well-nigh all that can be desired so far as its somewhat limited space permits. Although necessarily brief, the descriptions of the towns, cities, and stations, and of the railway or other routes by which they are reached, are in the main excellent, and convey a very large amount of useful and necessary information. The various routes are also carefully planned and thought out, and will enable the tourist to find his way about and to visit much of what is most worth seeing with the least amount of discomfort and difficulty. Whether, however, the "selected Hindustani phrases" at the end of the volume will enable the tourist to make himself understood by the natives of even the Hindustani-speaking provinces may be more than doubtful.

But the author has not been content to make his work a mere itinerary. On the contrary, he treats his readers to brief dissertations on the ethnology, natural history, and geology of the Indian Empire, with scrappy pieces of information with regard to the sport to be obtained. With respect to this aspect of the volume, we are compelled to say, in the first place, that the author has not allowed himself sufficient space to make the information he attempts to convey of any real value, and secondly, that it would have been well had he taken expert advice and assistance.

One fault about the introductory chapter is that it is too "parochial." The volume professes to treat of India, Ceylon, Burma, and Kashmir, but this chapter, although the reader is not told so, seems to refer only to India proper. For instance, we are told that shooting licences are not required (p. 10), and yet we find (p. 186) that these are necessary in Kashmir. Again, in the ethnological paragraphs we find no reference under the heading of non-Aryan races to either the Veddas of Ceylon, the Burmese, or the Mongoloid tribes of the north-east frontier, while the classification of the natives of the peninsula merely by religion leaves much to be desired. The general description of Indian scenery-inclusive of natural history and