An Encyclopædia of Natural Science

Abstract

THE attempt to compress into an encyclopædia of ten volumes our present knowledge of the main facts and theories of the natural sciences is an undertaking ambitious enough to daunt even the most courageous of authors and publishers. The volumes here before us, however, cannot but be received with unstinted praise. They owe their origin to the enterprise of the founder and original proprietor of the publishing house of Gustav Fischer, Jena, who felt that increasing specialisation in the sciences during the last decades had made it difficult for all except those directly connected with university institutions to keep in touch with subjects not involved in their ordinary activities. Moreover, there was the danger that science was tending to be regarded as a heterogeneous sum of unconnected spheres of knowledge and not as a harmonious whole, the gestaltetes Wissen which is so aptly expressed in the German word Wissenschafl. Our interest in the individual leaf must not extinguish our desire to see the whole tree. Handwörterbuch der Naturwissenschaften. Zweite Auflage. Herausgegeben von R. Dittler, G. Joos, E. Korschelt, G. Linck, F. Oltmanns, K. Schaum. Band 1: Abbau—Blut. Pp. x + 1078. 56 gold marks. Band 2: Blütenpflanzen—Dutrochet. Pp. viii + 1172. 61 gold marks. Band 3: Echinoderida—Fette. Pp. vii + 1230. 67 gold marks. Band 4: Fische—Geuther. Pp. viii + 1270. 67 gold marks. Band 5: Gewebe—Kützing. Pp. viii + 1286. 67 gold marks. Band 6:Lacaze-Duthiers—Morison, Robert. Pp. viii + 1134. 61 gold marks. Band 7: Morphologie der Pflanzen—Poisson. Pp. viii + 1140. 61 gold marks. Band 8: Polar-licht—Siemens. Pp. viii + 1248. 67 gold marks. Band 9:Silikate—Transformatoren. Pp. viii + 1158. 61 gold marks. Band 10: Transplantation bei Tieren—Zwillinge und Zwillingsforschung. Pp. viii + 1090. Dazu Sachregister und System-atische Inhaltsübersicht. Pp. 242 + 16. 73 gold marks. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1931–1935.)