te_, November 30, 1887.)

Phyllis Browne's Life of Mrs. Somerville forms part of a very interesting
little series, called 'The World's Workers'--a collection of short
biographies catholic enough to include personalities so widely different
as Turner and Richard Cobden, Handel and Sir Titus Salt, Robert
Stephenson and Florence Nightingale, and yet possessing a certain
definite aim. As a mathematician and a scientist, the translator and
popularizer of _La Mecanique Celeste_, and the author of an important
book on physical geography, Mrs. Somerville is, of course, well known.
The scientific bodies of Europe covered her with honours; her bust stands
in the hall of the Royal Society, and one of the Women's Colleges at
Oxford bears her name. Yet, considered simply in the light of a wife and
a mother, she is no less admirable; and those who consider that stupidity
is the proper basis for the domestic virtues, and that intellectual women
must of necessity be helpless with their hands, cannot do better than
read Phyllis Browne's pleasant little book, in which they will find that
the greatest woman-mathematician of any age was a clever needlewoman, a
good housekeeper, and a most skilful cook. Indeed, Mrs. Somerville seems
to have been quite renowned for her cookery. The discoverers of the
North-West Passage christened an island 'Somerville,' not as a tribute to
the distinguished mathematician, but as a recognition of the excellence
of some orange marmalade which the distinguished mathematician had
prepared with her own hands and presented to the ships before they left
England; and to the fact that she was able to make currant jelly at a
very critical moment she owed the affection of some of her husband's
relatives, who up to that time had been rather prejudiced against her on
the ground that she was merely an unpractical Blue-stocking.

Nor did her scientific knowledge ever warp or dull the tenderness and
humanity of her nature. For birds and animals she had always a great
love. We hear of her as a little girl watching with eager eyes the
swallows as they built their nests in summer or prepared for their flight
in the autumn; and when snow was on the ground she used to open the
windows to let the robins hop in and pick crumbs on the breakfast-table.
On one occasion she went with her father on a tour in the Highlands, and
found on her return that a pet goldfinch, which had been left in the
charge of the servants, had been