MR. TIMBS's books always produce upon us the effect of an ill-assorted dinner. There is plenty of solid food, but along with it some that is anything but wholesome; and the concatenation is badly managed, and the cooking none of the best. To take the concatenation first: The paragraphs in this volume are arranged under a variety of headings, but on what principle the assortment is made we have failed to discover. Thus we have paragraphs on Surface Movements of the Earth and on the Secular Cooling and Figure of the Earth, under Natural Philosophy; on Earthquakes and Volcanoes, under Geology and Mineralogy; on Protuberances of the Sun, under Natural Philosophy; and on Vast Sun Spots, under Astronomy and Meteorology; while two long accounts of the Gun-Cotton Explosion at Stowmarket are given, one under Mechanical and Useful Arts; the other under Chemical Science. Next, as to the cooking, in other words, editing. Very little pains appear to have been taken to go to the best authorities on each subject, or to trace statements to their original source. For instance, admirable papers as are the Spectator and Pall Mall Gazette, we hardly care to know what the one thinks as to the chance of men ever being able to fly, or the other about the sensitiveness of frogs during vivisection; and some more authoritative judgment on Prof. Tyndall's experiments on the purity of water might have been found than that of an anonymous writer in the Times. It is surely the result of careless editing to find on the same page two descriptions of the same bone-cave in Pennsylvania, although in one instance it is described, by a slight geographical confusion, as being situated “in Philadelphia.” Very familiar proper names are constantly misspelt or misquoted. Thus we hardly recognise Padre Secchi under the disguise of “Seeche;” or the admirable Genevan Society which has published so many valuable contributions to science, under the name of “The Society of Physics and Natural History of Ginevra.” As to the unwholesome and absolutely indigestible food, we will refer only to a single actual error. Canon Kingsley will be surprised to be made responsible, on the authority of our excellent contemporary the Builder, for the statement that “lime is a metal called by chemists ‘ calcium;’ but it is never found in that state in nature. It is found in a rocky or chalk form.” Other blunders almost as gross could be quoted. The book gives us the impression that the compiler was under the necessity of filling a certain number of pages, and that for this purpose the scissors and paste were freely used on the material that came the readiest to hand. The worst is that by the non-scientific public such books are taken as an authoritative record of the progress of science during the year, and of the most important inventions and discoveries, and the most striking new applications of old principles.
更多
原文链接
分享
引用
