REVIEWS 503 



tit-bits of information which commonly pass as chemistry in academic circles, 

 though nowhere in real life. 



If any one wish to know what our examination system is doing to degrade 

 science — if any one wish to understand why it is that reasoning power is a minus 

 quantity among our students and science decadent — let him take this book and 

 read, mark, learn and inwardly digest its contents ; let him ask himself how 

 in Heaven's name the student can acquire any knowledge of method from 

 its pages, anything worthy to be called scientific education. Yet it is in no 

 wise worse than its many predecessors of the same type — it is well printed, 

 the language is clear, it contains a fund of information of a kind. The illustrations 

 are few ; several are of indifferent merit and such as to encourage slovenly 

 work. Thus in fig. 6, on p. 38, illustrating the production of water on burning 

 hydrogen, this gas is depicted as evolved from an ordinary Woulfs bottle 

 provided with a thistle funnel instead of from one permitting of the regulation of 

 the rate at which the gas is produced and delivered, such as must be used 

 in carrying out the demonstration properly. It is customary to insist on round 

 bends being made in glass tubes : in the apparatus figured on p. 290, used 

 in demonstrating the production of sulphuric acid, the tubes are drawn with 

 sharp bends. Such slips are clear proof that the author is thinking of the 

 examination hall and not of what is right and proper in a laboratory. On p. 56 

 a figure is given illustrating the arrangement used by Dumas and Stas in 1843 m 

 determining the composition of water — in this not only are some parts not to the 

 original scale but the bulb containing the copper oxide is shown to be provided 

 with a ground-in glass tap of modern pattern and as heated by a Bunsen burner I 

 Such historical veracity is inexcusable. 



As was to be expected, the author is most at home in the physical sections of 

 the book — though these suffer not a little from the too frequent dogmatic methods 

 of statement characteristic of the modern obscurantist school of which he is a 

 disciple. Strange examples are to be met with in these sections — thus : — 



" The atomic weight of an element is therefore the smallest amount of it which 

 occurs in a molecule of one of its compounds, referred to the atom of hydrogen as 

 unity {strictly \ - oo8)." 



Such is the logic of chemists : unity rooS not 1, thanks to Landolt, Ostwald 

 and Co. and the settlement faked by votes, not by intelligence, to impose an 

 irrational, unscientifically chosen set of values upon the profession under the guise 

 of international "agreement." 



" Applying Avogardo's hypothesis, that one molecule occupies two unit volumes, 

 we have ^ 



2 vols nitrogen + 6 vols hydrogen + 4 vols ammonia. 

 N 2 3H 2 2NH,. 



Since the four volumes of ammonia must also contain two molecules, it follows 

 at once that the formula for ammonia is NH 3 . In this case it is necessary to know 

 the number of atoms in the molecules of hydrogen and of nitrogen and it must 

 be remembered that the molecules of all substances do not contain two atoms." 



Avogardo would have difficulty in recognising his work in such guise ! 



The chemical sections are in many cases extraordinarily weak — consisting for 

 the most part of brief statements that can be memorised and reproduced in an 

 examination paper. The section on Oxides and Oxyacids of nitrogen may be 

 taken as an example ; in this, in dealing with the interaction of nitric acid and 



