Water: Its Origin and Use

Abstract

THERE is little about water on which Mr. Coles Finch does not touch in this volume, for he even takes his readers back to the day when the world was but a glowing mist and oxygen would not have mbined with hydrogen. The method has its disadvantages, though useful to anyone in want of an encyclopaedic treatise, because the author has often to fall back on second-hand information, not even excluding the “science notes” of a daily journal. His manner of reference also is slipshod, for he is generally content with simply naming the author. But readers are not always trustful, and. like to be enabled to consult the original passage—especially after coming across one or two rather puzzling misprints, such as Gretroz for Giétroz, Maindetta for Maladetta, Demavena for Demavend, Dun, perhaps for Dust, and Brunz (the name of a Swiss Lake), we presume for Brienz. Small inaccuracies—such motes as might so easily have been removed by inducing a friend more familiar with the scientific side of the subject to read the proof sheets—are rather too numerous. Here are a few samples. The difference between hard and soft water is said on p. 127 to consist in the relative quantities of carbonate of lime in it, yet just below come the words, “there are two kinds of hardness, permanent and temporary,” the one due to the presence of calcium sulphate, the other to its carbonate. The amount of chalk in the world is probably over-estimated by forgetting that it means one, not every kind of imestone. Ice-fields are said, on p. 195, to form every winter on polar seas, ut the author directly afterwards speaks of them as occurring on Iceland, and makes an extraordinary statement about those of Greenland. “The ice-fields of Greenland are beyond our comprehension; how high the plateau rises we cannot say. … No man has yet penetrated more than 130 miles from the west coast, where the ice is nearer the sea. It is related that explorers, after travelling 130 miles, saw a solid wall of ice 6000 feet high, and rising towards the east” (p. 195). Has he forgotten Nansen and the “First Crossing of Greenland,” not to ention later explorations?

Water: Its Origin and Use.

By William Coles-Finch. Pp. xxi+483; with illustrations. (London: Alston Rivers, Ltd., 1908.) Price 21s. net.