Abstract
MANY books have been written about crystallographic calculation, and their size and the uninviting appearance of their contents have probably created an impression that there is something peculiarly difficult in the subject. M. Wyrouboff's manual will not, we fear, dispel this erroneous idea, for about 300 of his pages are devoted to an exposition of the methods of calculation; but the book, being eminently practical, consists almost entirely of examples, which are fully worked out by simple and intelligible methods, while very little space is wasted upon the geometrical principles involved. The work is therefore very different in character from the geometrical treatises which have frequently adorned the subject, and will doubtless be of great use to the class for whom it is written—namely, “those to whom crystallography is only a means for the determination and description of species,” to whom and to all who are attempting to acquire a practical knowledge of crystallography it may be warmly recommended. We would only suggest to such two words of caution: in the first place, the calculations are in each case conducted in two ways, by means of plane angles and solid geometry, and by means of spherical trigonometry,—the former method is unnecessary and undesirable; in the second place, the Millerian axes and notation of three indices should certainly be used in the rhombohedral system in preference to the notation of four axes.
Manuel Pratique de Cristallographie.
G. Wyrouboff. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et Fils, 1889.)
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Our Book Shelf . Nature 39, 411 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/039411a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/039411a0