Current Literature
EARLY ASTRONOMY AND CHRONOLOGY By C. P. S. Menon The first of a promising series of monographs to be known as the History of Science Library, under the general editorship of Professor A. Wolf, is appropriately devoted to a chapter in the early history of astronomy, the oldest and still to many minds the most fascinating of the sciences. Mr. C. P. S. Menon—a graduate both of Madras and London Universities —has written a very able and interesting essay on Early Astronomy and Chronology (Allen and Unwin, 10s.), which includes a lucid reconstruction of the earliest cosmical systems of which Indian, Chinese or Babylonian annals preserve any record. it is strange to notice that man's earliest conceptions of the universe were based on the square and the cube, rather than the circle and the sphere. Mr. Menoix devotes a striking chapter to numerical deductions from these rectangular conceptions, still embodied in the square which the Hindu astrologer draws in the dust before he erects his scheme of nativity or geomancy. We may also call attention to Mr. E. Buller Barwick's readable summary of the chief modern - inventions under the rather vague title of Man's Venius (Dent, 7s. 6d.) and to the well-written book called The Electrical Age (Benn, 10s. 6d.), in which Mr. V. H. L. Searle of Exeter University College continues- his clear and enter- taining description of such marvels as the X-ray tube, the electric furnace and electric refrigerator, the electric clock and the making of gramophone records.
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