Text-book of Practical Solid Geometry, &c, for the use of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich Geometrical Drawing for Army and Navy Candidates and Public School Classes

Abstract

THE characteristic deficiencies of English text-books are painfully conspicuous in most of the current works on practical geometry. Take a second-rate cookery-book, and shuffle the recipes at random; you will have a fair analogy to the quality and sequence of the books provided for the Army cadet or the Science and Art candidate. Assuredly they manage these things better in France. A century ago, Monge expounded the principles of the method of plan and elevation(géométrie descriptive as he called it) with a simplicity, clearness and order which have never been surpassed, although, no doubt, improvements in detail have been effected. The school which Monge created followed loyally in the steps of their master; and the consequence is that in France a student of civil or military engineering can attend a course or study a treatise on descriptive geometry which makes him familiar with a method, a system of elementary principles which he can apply to an endless variety of practical problems. Text-book of Practical Solid Geometry, &c., for the use of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. By Captain E. H. de V. Atkinson Pp. 116 + xvi plates. (London: E. and F. N. Spon, Ltd., 1899.) Geometrical Drawing for Army and Navy Candidates and Public School Classes. By E. C. Plant Vol. I. Practical Plane Geometry. Pp. xiv + 186. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1899.)