Abstract
THE attempt to crowd the Elements of Natural Philosophy into nine lectures cannot be otherwise than a failure. This is signally the case with the little book before us. We need hardly go farther than the table of contents to justify the statement. A single lecture is devoted respectively to Magnetism, Voltaic Electricity, Light, and Heat; Pneumatics and Hydrostatics together occupy one lecture, whereas to Frictional Electricity and Sound are given two lectures apiece. Nor does the author confine himself to a simple summary of the leading facts in each of these subjects, he tries to rush over all the field occupied by larger text-books. Hence, important facts are often lightly passed over and comparatively trivial matters made unduly prominent. In Voltaic Electricity, for example, two pages are occupied with a description of the effects of electro-chemical decomposition, when seen on the screen by the aid of the solar microscope. We recognise here, and indeed on every page of the book, those lecture-experiments with which Dr. Tyndall has made the students of the School of Mines so familiar. Mr. Ward has not only drawn largely upon his notes of those lectures, but he imitates Dr. Tyndall's language and style.
Elementary Natural Philosophy.
Being a course of nine lectures by J. Clifton Ward., Associate of the School of Mines. (London: Trübner and Co.)
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B., W. Elementary Natural Philosophy . Nature 3, 444 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003444a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003444a0