Notices respecting New Books. 51 



ill Ills copy it stood thin scales ; but probably having never seen bo- 

 racic acid, he read the printer's blunder without being aware it was 

 one. Again, in page 103, we are told that all soluble salts are more 

 or less rapid : we have no doubt in the original it was sapid; but on 

 reading his proof, Mr. F. knowing, perhaps, something more of me- 

 dicine than of chemistry, concluded that it meant rapid in their action. 

 But to return for a moment to the alkalies, a subject on which we 

 shall not long detain the reader, not for want of opportunity, but be- 

 cause the appropriations are so similar to those which have been no- 

 ticed with respect to the acids, that it would seem a twice told tale 

 to enumerate them. There is, however, one circumstance which so 

 completely illustrates Mr. Forsyth's scissors-and-paste-brush mode of 

 book-making, that we must give it, in spite of the length to which 

 our remarks have extended. 



Contrary to our usual practice, we shall first quote from Parkes, 

 (p. 83). "Formerly the fixed alkalies were considered to be simple 

 substances, no one having been able to decompose them ; but tiiey 

 are now found to be compound bodies. 



" It will be recollected, that, in the first edition of the Chemical Ca- 

 techism ^ written seventeen years ago, I offered this opinion of the 

 compound nature of the alkalies. The galvanic experiments of Sir 

 Humphry Davy have confirmed the truth of this conjecture, and proved 

 beyond all doubt, that potash and soda are both metallic oxides." 



Mr. Forsyth, bestowing more pains than he usually does in con- 

 cealing the sources of his information, alters the ]iassage we have 

 quoted, thus, page 6G. " Till latterly, the fixed alkalies were consi- 

 dered to be simple substances, in consequence of chemists not having 

 been able to decompose them ; but they are now known to be com- 

 pound bodies." To this he has ajipended the following note : "The 

 late galvanic experiments of Gir H. Davy have confirmed the truth of 

 this conjecture, and proved, beyond all doubt, that potass and soda 

 are both metallic oxides." In these quotations we have put some 

 words in italics; and tlicse prove such to be the undiscriminating 

 haste with which Mr. Forsytli aj^propriates the language of others, 

 that he had forgotten that tlie conjecture to which he alludes, was 

 Mr. Parkes's, and not his own. 



An Account of an Egyptian Mummy, presented to the Museum of 

 the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, by the late John 

 Blayds, Esq. Draxun up at the request of the Council, by Wil- 

 liam OsBUUN, Jim., F.lt.S.L. , Secretary to the Society : with an 

 Appendix, containing the Chemical and Anatomical Details of the 

 Examination ofthe Body. By Messrs. E. S. George, F.L.S., Secre- 

 tary to the Society ; T. i'. Teale; flHc/R. Hey. Leeds, 1S28, Svo, 

 pp. 51:5 lithographs. 

 After an attentive perusal of this work, and a minute comparison of 

 the details it contains with those of Dr. Granville's elaborate memoir 

 on the art of embalming among the ancient Egyptians*, we cannot 



* Phil. Trans. 18i>r>; abridged in Ann. of Phil. N.S. vol. xi. p. 215; aiul 

 in Phil. Mag. vol. Ixvi. p. 70. 



iVewiVWcs. Vol. 5. No. 25. Jfl». 1829. I but 



