326 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



It is hardly a coincidence that, of the twenty-eight titles announced, sixteen 

 deal with organic chemistry, and of these ten are on the chemistry of dyes, and 

 should prove of immense value in hastening the renaissance of the colour industry 

 in the land of its birth. The immediate object of the series may be best explained 

 in the editor's own words : 



" During the last four or five decades the applications of chemistry have 

 experienced an extraordinary development, and there is scarcely an industry that 

 has not benefited, directly or indirectly, from this expansion. Indeed, the science 

 trenches in greater or less degree upon all departments of human activity. 

 Practically every division of Natural Science has now been linked up with it in 

 .the common service of mankind. So ceaseless and rapid is this expansion that 

 the recondite knowledge of one generation becomes a part of the technology of the 

 next. Thus the conceptions of chemical dynamics of one decade become trans- 

 lated into the current practice of its successor ; the doctrines concerning chemical 

 structure and constitution of one period form the basis of large-scale synthetical 

 processes of another ; an obscure phenomenon like catalysis is found to be capable 

 of widespread application in manufacturing operations of the most diverse 

 character. This series of Monographs will afford illustrations of these and similar 

 facts, and incidentally indicate their bearing on the trend of industrial chemistry 

 in the near future. They will serve to show how fundamental and essential is the 

 relation of principle to practice. They will afford examples of the application of 

 recent knowledge to modern manufacturing procedure. As regards their scope, it 

 should be stated that the books are not intended to cover the whole ground of the 

 technology of the matters to which they relate. They are not concerned with the 

 technical minutice of manufacture except in so far as these may be necessary 

 to elucidate some point of principle. In some cases, where the subjects touch the 

 actual frontiers of progress, knowledge is so very recent and its application so very 

 tentative that both are almost certain to experience profound modification sooner 

 or later. This, of course, is inevitable. But even so such books have more than 

 an ephemeral interest. They are valuable as indicating new and only partially 

 occupied territory ; and as illustrating the vast potentiality of fruitful conceptions 

 and the worth of general principles which have shown themselves capable of 

 useful service." 



(i) Prof. Morgan's authority to write on the subject of the organic compounds 

 of arsenic and antimony is too well known to need emphasis, and in the present 

 volume he has not only produced a readable and comprehensive book on the 

 subject, but in so doing he has set a standard for the series which augurs well for 

 its success. As the author reminds us in the preface, the organic derivatives of 

 arsenic appeal to the scientific public for two widely different reasons. From the 

 historical standpoint these substances are of considerable interest because they 

 have been under investigation throughout a period of time coeval with the birth 

 and development of modern chemistry. Successive generations of chemists have 

 examined these compounds from points of view which varied with the gradual 

 evolution of chemical science, and the results of their researches have played an 

 important point in the establishment of current theories of the molecular consti- 

 tution of matter. Additional importance is conferred on the subject by the 

 circumstance that very early in the study of organic arsenical compounds it was 

 realised that in these synthetic products the physician has at his disposal sub- 

 stances of great physiological potency. It is chiefly this medicinal attribute of 

 organic arsenicals which has evoked the more recent activities in the synthesis 

 of organo-metalloidal compounds. These utilitarian investigations have not been 

 restricted to organic arsenicals, but have extended to the corresponding derivatives 



