Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse der Kaiserlichen Marine

Abstract

IN estimating the merits of a work like this German Manual, we must bear in mind that ordinary treatises are not what a traveller asks for. These are primarily written for the use of students, not for that of investigators, and the stand-points of the student and of the investigator are wholly different. The student takes a position in the very heart of the great continent of established knowledge, and his aim is to familiarise himself with what is already known, but the investigator places himself on the frontier of that continent, and is always directing his thoughts into the illimitable regions of the unknown. It is therefore obvious that the books needed by a traveller must be composed in a different spirit to those intended for students. They must summarise, so far as possible in the small space that is available, the most advanced knowledge of the several sciences; they must dwell at length upon what is not known, and they must explain how processes, commonly carried on at a table, with abundant appliances, may be undertaken in the open air, amid the manifold discomforts of a journey and in the isolation to which every traveller is necessarily obliged to submit. The satisfactory combination of these three requirements is hard to accomplish, while it is scarcely possible for anyone who has not himself been a traveller to do justice to the last of them.

Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse der Kaiserlichen Marine.

Edited by Dr. G. Neumayer. (Berlin, Oppenheim; London, Trübner, 1875.)