Pioneers of Electricity. By J. Munro. (Religions Tract Society.) Mr.
Munro goes far back for his beginning of electrical know- ledge. His first chapter is devoted to Thales. The fact, authentic or not, that Thales knew a piece of amber when rubbed would attract straws, hardly justifies the eighteen pages which are devoted to this philosopher. This, however, matters but little. It is as well that young people should know something about him, for, whether a pioneer of electricity or not, he was unquestionably a great man. From Thales we take a long leap—some two thousand years—to William Gilbert, who in 1600 published a treatise "De Magnate, Magneticisque Corporibus." Mr. Munro gives us here the few notices cognate to the subject which occur in the interval. In Franklin, the third subject, we have a real electrician. The other names are Charles Augustin de Coulomb, Volta, Sir Humphrey Davy, Hans Christian Oersted, Andre Ampere, Georg Ohm, Faraday, and James Clerk Maxwell.
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