AN AMERICAN ASTRONOMER'S EXPERIENCES.
Reminiscences of an Astronomer. By Simon Newcomb. (Harper and Brothers. 10s. 6d.)—This is as delightfully natural and readable a book of the autobiographical kind as has recently been published. The author, one of the most capable and best known of American astronomers—he was born in Nova Scotia, but claims to be of pure New England birth—tells how he, the son of a country school teacher, made his way into and in the world of astronomy, how he fared there, with what work of a permanently scientific kind he was asso- ciated, how he visited this country, and how he was treated. He had his ups and downs, his periods of hard and dreary work as well as of what he himself terms sweetness and light. His " apprenticeship " to Dr. Foshay, nominally a medical man, really a sot and a quack, reads like a companion picture to " Dotheboys Hall." Mr. Newcomb met some of the leading scientific men in America during his time. Of one of these, Chauncey Wright, a member of the scientific staff at Washing- ton, he says that if he "had systematically applied his powers," he might have preceded or supplanted Herbert Spencer as the great exponent of the theory of evolution. But he was reckless of the laws of health, did all his office work in two or three months of the year, "worked at his compu- tations far into the hours of the morning, stimulating his strength with cigars, and dropping his work only to take it up when he had had the necessary sleep." He died prematurely. Mr. Newcomb, although devoted to astronomy, took a keen in- terest in the public life of the States, sympathised with the North in the Civil War, and actually wrote a book, which brought him in nothing, to prove the rottenness of his Government's financial policy. His impressions of the men whom he met in this country, such as Tyndall and Mill, are good reading. But he is at his best, from the lay and non-scientific point of view, when he tells a story of provincial character, as thus :—" A soil like that of the Provinces was fertile in odd characters, including possibly here and there a 'heart pregnant with celestial fire.' One case quite out of the common line was that of two or three brothers employed in a sawmill somewhere up the river Petticodeac. According to common report, they had invented a new language in order to enable them to talk together without their companions knowing what they were saying. I knew one of them well, and after some time ventured to inquire about this supposed tongue. He was quite ready to explain it. The words were constructed eut of English by the very. simple process of reversing the syllables or the spelling. Everything was pronounced backward. Those who heard it and knew the key had no difficulty in con- struing the words ; to those who did not, the words were quite foreign."
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