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.
{158}
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.