Natural Philosophy for London University Matriculation

Abstract

WITH text-books innumerable devised specially for their use, it would be remarkable if candidates for the London matriculation should fail in natural philosophy. That so large a proportion should fail in this subject, as is the case, must be due not to the quantity, but to the quality of their sources of instruction. What then must be said of a teacher who takes upon himself to venture on the scene with an inferior and trashy work in which all the worst blunders of the exploded text-books of a past date are reproduced? Although the writer of the book lying before us professes his indebtedness to the excellent manuals of Dr. Wormell and Mr. Philip Magnus, and to the invaluable assistance of his friend Mrs. Annie Besant, he cannot be congratulated on his success in following in the tracks of his predecessors. His book is, in fact, a cram-book of the worst and weakest type. The barest minimum of the subject divided into the inevitable Statics and Dynamics constitutes the programme; Optics and Heat being somehow thrown in along with Moving Bodies as divisions of the latter of these two branches.

Natural Philosophy for London University Matriculation.

By Edward B. Aveling (London: Stewart and Co., 1881.)