Notices respecting New Books. 69 
dissolve it. In this state of tenuity the platina requires but 
little acid. J afterwards precipitate with the ammoniacal 
muriate ; | wash the salt repeatedly with small quantities of 
water, and obtain by its reduction the platina in its greatest 
known state of purity. 
XIV. Notices respecting New Books. 
Elements of Chemistry. By J. Murnay, Lecturer on 
Chemistry, and on Materia Medica and Pharmacy, Edin- 
burgh. Iwo Vols. 8vo. pp. 1040, with three Plates. 
Tue author has not. announced this work as the second 
edition of the Elements of Chemistry, which he published 
some years 2go; as, from the rapid progress of the science, 
it has been necessary, as he informs us, to write it nearly 
anew. ‘Its object, however, is the same,—to give such a 
view of chemistry as shall convey a just knowledge of its 
leading principles, and more important facts, without in- 
cluding the discussion of controverted opinions, or the 
Statement of those minute details which have with pro- 
priety a place in a systematic work,” 
Modern chemists in forming their systems of chemical 
classification have in general followed the synthetic arrange- 
ments: Mr. Murray, on the contrary, has adopted the ana- 
_ lytic, and we think that in this he has shown his judge- 
ment; for we cannot conceive any thing more decidedly 
calculated to retard the progress of a tyro, than attempts to 
make him comprehend the nature of simple substances 
which have never yet been presented, per se, to the cog- 
nisance of sense. The most direct introduction to a know- 
ledge of chemistry would, in our opinion, be, to commence 
with such facts as present themselves daily and are more or 
Jess known to all—as the boiling of water, the causes which 
co-operate, the effects that accompany it, and the processes 
to which it gives rise; combustion, the accompanying 
phenomena as its respects the changes produced on the air, 
production of carbonic acid gas and azote, the emission of 
light and heat; lime-burning conducted in close vessels, 
the gas produced, its identity with that obtained by the 
combustion of charcoal, solubility and precipitation of lime, 
&c.&e.&c. By some such method as this the pupil might 
be made to witness the production of the various agents 
employed in analysis and combined by synthesis, nor would 
he feel himself compelled to take any thing upon trust, in 
E3 the 
