The Circle secerned from the Square; and its area gauged in terms of a triangle common to both. By Wm. Houlston,[274] Esq. London and Jersey, 1862, 4to.
Mr. Houlston squares at about four poetical quotations in a page, and brings out [pi] = 3.14213.... His frontispiece is a variegated diagram, having parts designated Inigo and Outigo. All which relieves the subject, but does not remove the error.
Considerations respecting the figure of the Earth.... By C. F. Bakewell.[275] London, 1862, 8vo.
Newton and others think that in a revolving sphere the {157} loose surface matter will tend to the equator: Mr. Bakewell thinks it will tend to the poles.
On eccentric and centric force: a new theory of projection. By H. F. A. Pratt, M.D.[276] London, 1862, 8vo.
Dr. Pratt not only upsets Newton, but cuts away the very ground he stands on: for he destroys the first law of motion, and will not have the natural tendency of matter in motion to be rectilinear. This, as we have seen, was John Walsh's[277] notion. In a more recent work "On Orbital Motion," London, 1863, 8vo., Dr. Pratt insists on another of Walsh's notions, namely, that the precession of the equinoxes is caused by the motion of the solar system round a distant central sun. In this last work the author refers to a few notes, which completely destroy the theory of gravitation in terms "perfectly intelligible as well to the unlearned as to the learned": to me they are quite unintelligible, which rather tends to confirm a notion I have long had, that I am neither one thing nor the other. There is an ambiguity of phrase which delights a writer on logic, always on the look-out for specimens of _homonymia_ or _aequivocatio_. The author, as a physician, is accustomed to "appeal from mere formulae": accordingly, he sets at nought the whole of the mathematics, which he does not understand. This equivocation between the formula of the physician and that of the mathematician is as good, though not so perceptible to the world at large, as that made by Mr. Briggs's friend in _Punch's_ picture, which I cut out to paste into my Logic. Mr. Briggs wrote for a couple of _bruisers_, meaning to prepare oats for his horses: his friend sent him the Whitechapel Chicken and the Bayswater Slasher, with the gloves, all ready.
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On matter and ether, and the secret laws of physical change. By T. R. Birks, M.A.[278] Cambridge, 1862, 8vo.
Bold efforts are made at molecular theories, and the one before me is ably aimed. When the Newton of this subject shall be seated in his place, books like the present will be sharply looked into, to see what amount of anticipation they have made.
