Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/305

Rh undertaken under the able editorship of Sir Henry E. Roscoe, will contribute to this result by showing that the laboratory and the explorer's camp have their heroes as well as the battlefield. Sir Henry contributes the opening volume to the series, taking as his subject his eminent British predecessor in the field of chemistry, John Dalton Dalton's great contribution to chemistry is the atomic theory, and it may be fairly ranked as the comer stone of the science. He also established important laws concerning the behavior of gases and made valuable meteorological researches. In depicting the scientist, Sir Henry does not let us lose sight of the man. He shows us Dalton as the Cumbrian Quaker lad, with his northern dialect and mild though unpolished manners; then as the young schoolmaster and the tutor, careful of his scanty resources and no less so of his time; afterward as the plain and unpretending man of science, ever ready for a pipe and a chat with the friends of old times, but with no faculty for being agreeable to persons who did not interest him. Having, when a young man, bought a pair of silk stockings as a present for his mother, supposing them to be of orthodox drab, he was greatly astonished to hear them pronounced "Varra fine stuff, but uncommon scarlety." It was in this way that his eyes were opened to the defect of his vision, and he at once proceeded to make the first scientific study of color-blindness. Dalton had the frame of a northern yeoman, high but not extraordinary mental powers, and—perseverance. To this last quality rather than to genius he ascribed whatever of value he accomplished, and in this respect he seems to have judged correctly.

Is the story of the Herschels especially dramatic, or is it Miss Gierke's talent as a narrator that makes her contribution to the Century Series a remarkably fascinating volume? William Herschel's laying down the baton of a musical director to become an astronomer is dramatic enough, and so is his sister's dutiful abandonment of a career as a vocalist to serve as his assistant. William had been trained in music by his father, who was bandmaster in a Hanoverian regiment; he had proved a bright boy at school, and when he went to England at nineteen years of age was a young man of pleasant address, "who spoke English perfectly, played like a virtuoso, and possessed a curious stock of varied knowledge." Miss Clerke has made a continuous story of his life, intertwining the thread of his musical and that of his scientific vocation, where these are contemporaneous, with that of his personal history, A chapter devoted to Caroline tells of her early years as a family drudge and her quarter century of retirement after her brother's death, supplying also some additional details of her co-operation in his labors. The sketch of Sir John Herschel is given in much the same style as that of his father. While mainly occupied with his observations in the southern hemisphere and other astronomical labors, it tells also of his work in physics and mathematics, and his writings—not omitting his verse. The volume contains a portrait of each of its subjects.

To those who imagine that the name J. von Liebig stands merely for a manufacturer of meat extracts, who may still be conducting his works