A Hand-Book of Astronomy

Abstract

IN commenting upon the first part of this revised edition of Mr. Chambers's “Descriptive and Practical Astronomy,” we pointed out the utter insufficiency of the portion devoted to the study of the sun, inasmuch as it left solar spectroscopy altogether out of consideration. Such an arrangement is a breach in the continuity of scientific inquiry, and a grievous fault in a hand-book that makes some pretence to give facts in historical sequence. The second volume deals with instrumental and practical astronomy, and in it we find spectroscopical astronomy interpolated; the work that has been done in this direction following the description of the instruments employed. This circumstance, however, at once exhibits an inconsistency, for, if spectroscopy properly follows a description of the spectroscope, then telescopy should follow a description of the telescope; whereas in the former volume the aspects of the heavenly bodies were described, and in this the instruments by means of which they are observed.

Hand-book of Astronomy.

Parts II. and III. By George F. Chambers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890.)