REVIEWS 317 



is as young as he feels, and certainly the author of Chemistry in Everyday 

 Life must feel somewhere in the early twenties. The book shows some signs 

 of similarity to Everyman's Chemistry, but is none the worse for that. 



F. A. M. 



A Textbook of Organic Chemistry. By E. de Barry Barnett, B.Sc, 

 A. I.e. [Pp. xii + 380, with 15 illustrations.] (London: J. and 

 A. Churchill, 1920. Price 15s. net.) 



Yet another short textbook on organic chemistry following more or less 

 the lines of most other similar books on the subject. The chief claim to 

 originality appears to be the inclusion of a " short account of the Richter 

 system of indexing, and a very brief mention of a few of the standard works 

 of reference," with a view to providing chemists with " the knowledge of 

 where to find information," since, in the author's experience, " many chemists 

 are woefully ignorant of the literature of their science." 



In the ten pages devoted to carbohydrates, we look in vain for any men- 

 tion of the lactone formula for glucose, or of the a and )3 modifications of 

 this substance ; similarly, the subject of mutarotation is not mentioned, and 

 glucosides likewise are omitted from the book. The short chapter devoted 

 to Purins and Alkaloids is also disappointing. 



P. H. 



BOTANY AND AGE.ICTJLTUIIE 



The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C. Bose, M.A., P.R.S. By Patrick Geddes. 

 [Pp. xii + 259, with portraits and illustrations.] (London : Long- 

 mans, Green & Co. Price 165. net.) 



Professor Bose was born in Eastern Bengal and educated at St. Xavier's 

 College, Calcutta. From there he came to London, with the intention of 

 entering the medical profession. His health not allowing of the fulfilment 

 of the scheme, he went on to Cambridge, and was trained there in natural 

 science. He began teaching Physics in an Indian University, and his first 

 researches, very interesting and important ones, are in connection with this 

 subject. 



The last of these investigations led him to note certain peculiarities 

 of inanimate objects, such as the metals, which suggested comparisons 

 with the behaviour of living beings on stimulation. The intrinsic interest 

 of these discoveries, and probably partly the difficulty which Bose found in 

 getting a ready acceptance for the explanations which he put forward, 

 gradually brought his studies more and more from the physical to the phy- 

 siological. His physical training, and the fact that he was accustomed 

 to measuring various constants with accuracy, showed him the need, as 

 indeed it had showed others, of tackling physiological phenomena with more 

 delicate instruments than had hitherto been the case, instruments not subject 

 to such gross limitations as the human senses, that were so commonly used 

 as recorders. Sir Jagadis not only perceived this need, but he possessed 

 what is indeed a rare gift, the inventive powers necessary to produce such 

 instruments, and the infinite patience which enabled him to wait, for years 

 in some cases, until the inspiration necessary for the completion of some 

 particular instrument, or part of an instrument, came to him. 



Professor Geddes describes shortly these products of inventive genius, 

 the optical lever, the resonant recorder, and the various crescographs. 

 He shows that their uses are not necessarily limited to the particular fields 

 of activity in which Bose works, that the principle of the optical lever, for 

 example, has been used in the Cambridge Botanical Laboratory for the 

 elucidation of quite a difierent problem. 



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