The Theory of Heat

Abstract

FROM the point of view of scope and comprehensiveness this work forms the most important treatise on heat that has yet been published in this country. It does not teem with new ideas or new modes of presentation, like the book bearing the same title that Maxwell contributed to a series of text-books announced as primarily intended for the instruction of artisans; nor does it appeal to the general reader in the same way as the remarkable book in which Tyndall undertook to present to him the “rudiments of a new philosophy” a generation ago. Each in its own way, both the books we have referred to far surpass the one now before us in originality and individuality. These qualities, indeed, are not specially characteristic of the present work. A systematic and comparatively complete presentation of the present state of the science of heat, both in respect of experimental methods and theoretical developments, has been what the author has striven to furnish, and in this he has attained a degree of success which makes his book one of great value, and amounts to a kind of originality. In French and German we find works dealing with the whole round of Physics (e.g., Jamin and Bouty, Wüllner), in which the section devoted to Heat is planned on as comprehensive a scale and carried out in as much detail as the work before us, but hitherto no similar treatises have existed in English. Mr. Preston's book thus supplies, for the branch of which he treats, a distinct want in our scientific literature, and it may be confidently expected to contribute a good deal towards raising the culture and widening the scientific horizon of English students.

The Theory of Heat.

By Thomas Preston Pp. xvi. and 719. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1894.)