College and Research Libraries


422 I Colle ge & Research Libraries • November 1970 

Neal is more interested in the trees than the 
forest-particularly British trees. 

It is highly doubtful that these works will 
be of any value to librarians in this country. 
Some of Thompson is acceptable as an in-
troduction to librarianship for the neophyte. 
For others, the most one could do is to ac-
quaint one's self with some general atti-
tudes of British librarians toward a number 
of British library problems.-Gustave A. 
Harrer, U nwersity of Florida. 

Physical Sciences. The Royal Institution, 
Library of Science (being the Friday 
Evening Discourses in Physical Sciences 
held at the Royal Institution: 1851- 1939). 
Ed. by William Lawrence Bragg and 
George Porter. Barking, Essex, England: 
Elsevier Publishing Co., Ltd. 1970. 10v., 
illustrated. £63. 

Visualize a crisp winter evening in 1860, 
a warm room filled with the sweet aroma 
of pipes and cigars, and several men dis-
cussing the evening's agenda. On this par-
ticular evening, one of the speakers is John 
Tyndall who is to speak on "The Influence 
of Magnetic Force on the Electric Charge." 
Sir Tyndall's discourse is only one of sev-
eral that will be presented for discussion 
this evening, and is, as are many of the 
discourses, an illustrated lecture. You can 
place yourself in this room by reading a 
report of Tyndall's discourse plus those of 
Faraday, Brodie, Maxwell, Spottiswodde, 
Kelvin, Rayleigh, Rutherford, Heilbron, and 
many others, which are in the ten-volume 
work, Physical Sciences. 

The discourses cover physics and chem-
istry and are either in the form of a de-
scriptive abstract or in the complete text. 
The eighty-nine years covered encompass 
a span of time which saw a change from 
classical physics to new physics and the 
emergence of the basic concepts of struc-
tural organic chemistry and valency. "This 
series of Discourses therefore represents a 
cross section of the growth of physics and 
chemistry in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century and the first half of the 
twentieth century and represents a great 
turning point in the history of the physical 
sciences." 

The ten volumes are arranged in chron-
ological order with a table of contents in 
each volume. The lack of a general index 
does prevent the scholar from locating a 
particular essay when he is not sure of the 
exact date. Three additional series are now 
in preparation covering Astronomy, Earth 
Sciences, and Biological Science. After pub-
lication of these, further discourses will be 
published in four series covering Medical 
Sciences, Social Sciences, Applied Sciences, 
and History and Philosophy of Science. 

For the history of science scholars, this 
collection of "Friday Evening Discourses" 
should prove to be a valuable source of 
information. It is unfortunate that the fifty 
years prior to 1851 had no regular publica-
tion of accounts or abstracts of presented 
lectures to be preserved in the manner that 
Sir William Bragg has done so well.-
H. Robert Malinowsky, University of Kan-
sas. 

Tolkien Criticism. An Annotated Check-
list (The Serif Series, no. 11). By Rich-
ard C. West. Kent, Ohio: Kent State 
University Press, 1970. 73p. $4.25. 

Richard West compiles the writings and 
criticism of J. R. R. Tolkien, whose mete-
oric rise in popularity in this country fol-
lowed the paperback reprinting of his tril-
ogy, Lord of the Rings, in 1965. Tolkien 
Criticism aptly serves as a chronicle of the 
Tolkien phenomenon, and the author has 
chosen a fitting time to release his bibliog-
raphy-late enough to capture important 
recent criticism of Tolkien's works, but 
prompt enough to provide the scholar and 
Tolkien enthusiast with a most welcome 
symposium when interest in this English 
author is running high. 

Interest in J. R. R. Tolkien extends far 
beyond the characters and plot of the Rings 
trilogy, but there is little doubt that the 
trilogy has become the focal point for seri-
ous discussion of the man and his works. 
The American paperback reprinting of 
Lord of the Rings, by Ace and Ballantine 
in 1965, ten years after its original publica-
tion, caught the college campuses in the 
right mood for a whopping good tale of 
high adventure, set in a colorful fairyland