NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Evening Star, Issue 3271, 14 August 1873, Page 3

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Applied Mechanics, an elementary handbook, with eighty-eight diagrams, by William Rossiter, F. R.A.8., F.C.S., F.R.G.&. William Hay, bookseller, Princes street, Dunedin.

This work is a digest of the theory of mechanics as applied to everyday processes, arid from the necessarily cursory examination of it that we have been able to give, is calculated to smooth the way to those higher attainments becoming constantly more requisite with the advance of art and science. It is dedicated to Professor Huxley, Principal of the Mouth London Working Men’s College, than whom no one has done more to popularise science. Its object - ., briefly stated in tbe preface, is “to explain in simple language so much of the science of applied mechanics as is required for elementary examinations on the subject.” It should be placed in the hands of every workman and every schoolboy, and those engaged in other than mechanical arts will be all the better for knowing the principles of processed carried on daily and hourly before their eyes. The following specimen of forcible writing and reasoning, expressed in simple terms, is worthy of study by all teachers :

It is common to say that the seed becomes a twig, and the twig a tree ; but this is not the truth: the seed does not become a twig, the twig does not become a tree. The materials which become the tree are in the ground, the rain, and the air. The office of the seed is to bring these materials together, to enable them to combine so as to form a tree. It would be as true to say that a wire is made of the hole through which it is drawn, as that a tree comes from its seed. The seed is to the tree what the hole is to the wire, except that it does the work itself, and does not require to be set going.

Mineralogy : A First Book, suitable for selfinstruction, by J, H. Collins, F. G. S. W. Collins, Sons and Co., London and Glasgow. William Hay, bookseller, Princes street, Dunedin. The author says :

The study of minerals, although of theiitmost importance to many thousands of our countrymen, and especially to the very numei'ous and intelligent class of metal miners, has been until lately almost entirely confined to a few students in the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Some of these students have made for themselves an European reputation, more especially in the department of crystallography, but the working miner has usually been content to know only the two or three common forms of the ores for which he more especially labors; and the result of this ignorance has been seen in many expensive mistakes—of pyrites for gold, quartz for diamonds or other precious stones, &c., or in the waste of many valuable minerals of unobtrusive exterior.

Nowhere is such knowledge more requisite than in the Australasian Colonies. 1 brought want of it a few years ago in New South Wales inferior crystals were mistaken for diamonds, and there is reason to think in the process of searching for gold many valuable minerals have been altogether overlooked and thrown away as useless. The value of this class of works is that not only do they give ample and accurate information, but they point out a system of examination equally applicable to assist a teacher in giving instruction and a student in testing the extent of his own knowledge.

Steam and the Locomotive Engine , by Henry Eurs; William Collins, Sons, and Co., London and Glasgow ; A. R.

Livingston, Princes street, Dunedin,

This is a clear and very interesting description of the steam engine; and, although theauthor states his wish has been “ to make the subject as easy, practical, and perspicuous as possible, by omitting whatever is dry in theory, if not absolutely requisite, or likely to puzzle and confuse,” he has contrived to mix the scientific with the popular, so as tp render it, useful and intelligible to non-professional students. To each division is attached a series of exercises “ chiefly from examination papers,” The work cannot fail to be useful.

We have also received a copy of this work from Mr William Hay, whom we beg to thank.