Laboratory Arts

Abstract

SKILL and wide knowledge in “laboratory arts” are much rarer attainments than the accumulation of ideas relating to abstract or even to mathematical physics, yet, without making comparisons, it is essential to the success of the experimentalist. If it were not for the fact that such skill and knowledge are not to be acquired by mere reading of a few books, it might be thought that the disproportion alluded to above might be the result of the still more marked disproportion between books of the text-book type dealing with the two branches of attainment. Actually, it is probably the cause, or partly so, and it may be also that the scarcity of books such as that now being noticed is due to a belief on the part of the few qualified to write them that, dealing as they do with a subject which directly is not an examination subject, there will be no great demand for them. Whatever the cause may be of the scarcity of books dealing with laboratory arts, they are actually invaluable, and from Faraday's chemical manipulation onwards they furnish the experimentalist with ideas as to how to accomplish his purpose.

Laboratory Arts.

A Teacher's Handbook dealing with Materials and Tools used in the Construction, Adjustment, and Repair of Scientific Instruments. By Dr. George H. Woollatt. Pp. xii+192; with 119 diagrams. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908.) Price 3s. 6d. net.