An introduction to magneto-fluid mechanics

ing journals. At the head of each abstract is the name of the author and the title of the paper, although not its date or origin, and also a pair of numbers. The reader is able to find by trial that one of these numbers is the serial number of the same paper as entered in the bibliographical list, the other being a new serial number for the paper in the sequence of abstracts. At the end of the volume are three lists. The first, a short one, is of numbers entitled ‘List of the entries included in bibliography no. 1’; bibliography no. 1 is apparently what this bibliography used to be when it was issued informally by AGARD in February 1960. The second is an index to authors, which presumably serves to identify the number of a paper written by a known author who is one of several joint authors and not the first named, the latter alone being used in the bibliographical list. The last is a subject-index, in which there are seven main divisions, like ‘magnetohydrodynamics ’ and ‘magneto-gas-dynamics ),with afew sub-divisions for each. The value of the subject index will be limited by the fact that the subheading ‘ General’ swallows up about half the entries in four of the main divisions. It is obviously useful to prepare and disseminate an up-to-date and ordered list of papers on this important subject, and the initiative and work contributed by AGARD have been widely appreciated. But why print a second time, publish, and sell at a substantial price, a bibliography which pays little attention to the ordinary principles of fact-gathering and indexing? As well as being rather wasteful, the book does not maintain accepted standards in scientific publications. G. K. BATCHELOR