SMALL books on practical physics have been very plentiful of recent years since the subject has taken a place in school, but the number of large and complete treatises in English embracing all branches is still few. Looking back the present writer can recall to mind as the earliest an English translation of Kohlrausch's “Leitfaden” by Waller and Procter, published in 1873, and the book, in two volumes, by E. C. and W. H. Pickering, on “Physical Measurements,” published in, 1873 and 1876. The latter was founded on the course of practical physics conducted at the Boston School of Technology by the authors, who have since become two of the foremost astronomers of the United States. After these two books we have to pass to 1884, when Glazebrook and Shaw's “Practical Physics” was published. It was founded on the elementary practical course conducted in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and is still in use, and is perhaps the one book on practical physics which has had the widest influence on English laboratory methods. All these books placed the side of accurate measurement before the student, and omitted demonstrations and showy lecture experiments from their contents. They were written for the student's use in the laboratory, and formed a great advance on the descriptive books in which physics and chemistry were mixed, and which constituted the science of the popular lecturer of the early and middle Victorian period.
A Text-book of Practical Physics.
By Dr. William Watson Pp. xvi + 626. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1906.) Price 9s.