It will not be to everybody's taste to have the annunciation described in this way:
God the Father sent an angel called Gabriel to that city of flowers--Nazareth in Galilee--sent him to a sweet and good and lovely _but quite poor girl_ called Mary who was soon to be married to a man much older than herself, called Joseph.
And when we tried to read Mrs. Macandrew's paraphrases of the parables we recalled with a sigh Mr. Birrell's complaint against Canon Farrar, "who elongated the Gospels." It no doubt gave Mrs. Macandrew some months of happiness to write the book, but we think she was ill-advised in submitting it to the public.
CATALYSIS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. By ERIC K. RIDEAL and HUGH S. TAYLOR. Macmillan & Co. 17_s._ net.
In spite of the difficulties which war-time placed in the way of publishers, the production of scientific books, both in England and Germany, has been astonishingly large during the past five years. The greater number of them have--naturally enough--been devoted either to technical subjects or to branches of science having an immediate technical application. The field of industrial chemistry, especially, has been well tended by the writers, and not only new books, but new series of books--such as Messrs. Longmans' _Monographs on Industrial Chemistry_, Messrs. Churchill's _Textbooks of Chemical Research_, and Messrs. Baillière, Tindall, and Cox's _Industrial Chemistry_ series--have appeared to bear witness to the activity of the English chemists. Certain subjects in particular have been extensively treated; we may instance synthetic colouring matters, colloid chemistry, and catalysis, the last-named subject having books devoted to it in all the series just specified. In these the subject is handled from the industrial point of view, but it is frequently seen that the commercial and the theoretical developments of a science are mutually stimulating, discoveries made in the laboratory without any object but the wresting of knowledge from nature finding commercial application, and the commercial processes suggesting fresh theoretical problems. The great industrial importance of catalysis has led to a revived interest in the scientific theories of the process, and the latest book on the subject, by Drs. Eric Rideal and Hugh Taylor, deserves praise for having devoted considerable attention to the historical and theoretical aspect of the subject, which has been rather neglected of late.