POCKET BOOKS.
Among the works under this denomination for 1829, we notice two, which from their almost indispensible utility, deserve the name of Hardy Annuals. The first is Adcock's Engineers' Pocket Book, and contains tables of British weights and measures, multiplication and division obtained by inspection, tables of squares and cubes and square and cube roots, and mensuration; tables of the areas and circumferences of circles, &c.; the mechanical powers, animal strength, mills and steam-engines, treatises on hydraulics, pneumatics, heat, &c., and on the strength and heat of materials. To these are superadded the usual contents of a pocket book, so as to render the present volume a desirable vade-mecum for the operative, the manufacturer, and engineer.
One of Mr. Adcock's most popular illustrations will not be uninteresting to the reader:—
"Force of Gunpowder."—"If we calculate the quantity of motion produced by gunpowder, we shall find that this agent, though extremely convenient, is far more expensive than human labour; but the advantage of gunpowder consists in the great rarity of the active substance; a spring or a bow can only act with a moderate velocity on account of its own weight; the air of the atmosphere, however compressed, could not flow into a vacuum with a velocity so great as 1,500 feet in a second; hydrogen gas might move more rapidly; but the elastic substance produced by gunpowder is capable of propelling a very heavy cannon ball with a much greater velocity."
Of an opposite character, but equally useful, and more attractive for the general reader, is the second,—The Spoilsman's Pocket Book, by a brother of the author of the preceding. Here are the usual pocket-book contents, and the laws, &c. of British sports and pastimes—as shooting, angling, hunting, coursing, racing, cricket, and skating: from the latter we subjoin a hint for the benefit of the Serpentine Mercuries; which proves the adage ex liguo non fit Mercurius:—
"Care should be taken that the muscular movements of the whole body correspond with the movements of the skates, and that it be regulated so as to be almost imperceptible to the spectators; for nothing so much diminishes the grace and elegance of skating as sudden jerks and exertions. The attitude of drawing the bow and arrow, whilst the skater is forming a large circle on the outside, is very beautiful, and some persons, in skating, excel in manual exercises and military salutes."
The whole series of pocket books by the Messrs. Adcocks, extend, we believe, to eight, adapted for all descriptions of industriels, as well as for the less occupied, who are not "the architects of their own fortunes."
Dr. Parr was the last learned schoolmaster who was professedly an amateur of the rod; and in that profession there was more of humour and affectation than of reality, for with all his habitual affectation and his occasional brutality, Parr was a good-natured, generous, warm-hearted man; there was a coarse husk and a hard shell, like the cocoa-nut, but the core was filled with the milk of human kindness.—Quarterly Review.