BIOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENTS By Sir Arthur Schuster, F.R.S.
Sir Arthur Schuster's Biographical Fragments (Macmillan : 10s. 6d.) have a personal interest for his many friends and his old pupils in the University of Manchester and are also of -value for his reminiscences of the many great scientists of the nineteenth century whom lie knew well. • He was born at Fninkfort in 1851, and came to England in 1869, as his father, disliking the Prussian annexation of the old Free City, had migrated to Manchester. Sir Arthur was intended for a business career, but was allowed to study at Owens College and, under Kirchhoff and Bunsen, at Heidelburg where he took a modest degree after the one and only examination for which he—fortunate youth—ever had to sit. lie must have shown exceptional talent, for at the age of twenty-three he was entrusted by the Royal Society with the conduct of its expedition to obscr'c the solar eclipse of April, 1875, in Sinni. His interesting narrative of this task is followed by a long account of a walking tour in the Himalayas from Simla to Kashmir. A few anecdotes, one of them telling of the capture of a lion by means of fly-papers, lead up to the reminiscences of Leverrier, Joule, Balfour Stewart, Osborne Reynolds, Sir George Gabriel Stokes, the able but eccentric Henry Wilde of Manchester, and Sir Arthur's German professors. At the close he states that when, during the War, he was accused of Using a wireless set in the enemy's interest, Lord Roberts was at pains to show, by a simple act of courtesy, that he for one . had the fullest belief in Sir Arthur's loyalty to the country Of his adoption.
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