;66 



NATURE 



[January 19, 191 1 



chemistry and the rapid advances which are taking 

 place owing to chemical research and improved 

 methods prevent any book, however well up-to-date 

 on its publication, from holding its place unless it is 

 continually revised. In this respect Allen's book re- 

 quired revision along with other reference books of a 

 similar nature. The work has now been taken up 

 by new editors, and when this is the case one natur- 

 ally scrutinises somewhat carefully the new edition 

 to ascertain whether real improvements have been 

 made. It must be said at once that the revision of 

 another man's work is much more difficult than to 

 start to write a book de novo, and the attempts 

 which one naturally makes to leave in paragraphs 

 untouched which were written ten years ago and in- 

 corporate them with new material, the reverse of easy. 



The editing is being jointly carried out by Mr. 

 W. A. Davis, of London, and Mr. Samuel S. Sadtler, 

 of America. As British and American methods of 

 analysis are not always quite similar this editorship 

 strikes one as being a wise, but at the same time 

 rather difficult arrangement. The individual sections 

 are, as is always the case in reference books of this 

 nature, written by different collaborators. In this 

 volume Dr. F. C. Garrett deals with hydrocarbons 

 of the aliphatic, olefine, and acetylene series and of 

 tars. This section, also under acetylene, includes the 

 valuation of calcium carbide and a reference to the 

 method of Lunge and Cedercreutz in the Zeitschrift 

 fiir anorganische Chemie is given. The abstract of 

 the method, however, is hardly sufficiently full. 

 Surely such books as the one under review are written 

 to enable the reader to carry out estimations without 

 having to refer to the original literature. We do not 

 mean that all processes for the analysis of a given 

 substance should be given, but surely one — the one the 

 writer of the section considers the best — should be set 

 out in detail. The others need be only briefly referred 

 to, or the references to the original literature given. 



The processes of tar analysis differ so considerably in 

 detail in different works and with the various pro- 

 cesses of distillation — that is to say, high- or low- 

 temperature distillation — and the quality of the coal, 

 that probably the author is right in giving a more 

 or less general survey of the subject. We think, 

 however, that the tars produced from the water-gas 

 process and coke-oven tar might have been described 

 in greater detail. 



Mr. Sadtler has compiled the section on bitumens, 

 and treats of the distillation of petroleum, ozokerite, 

 asphalt, petroleum and shale products, cyclic hydro- 

 carbons from coal tar, coal tar naphtha, and other 

 similar products. This section is fairly full, and occu- 

 pies 223 pages, that is to say, rather more than one- 

 third of the book. On the whole the section on petrol- 

 eum oils is very good. The subject is a big one, 

 but most of the ground is covered in a quite satisfac- 

 tory manner. One can see that the author is largely 

 writing at first hand, and although he quotes many 

 authorities, he usually lets the reader know which he 

 considers is the most trustworthy method to adopt. 



Mr. Sadtler is also responsible for anthracene and 

 its associates and for the phenols. The latter section 

 is naturally of great importance owing to the extended 

 NO. 2 15 I, VOL. 85] 



employment of phenols and phenolic derivatives for 

 disinfecting and antiseptic purposes. The subject is 

 treated in a broad and comprehensive manner, and 

 deals not only with phenols and creosotes from coal 

 tar, but also from various other sources, such as blast- 

 furnace tar, shale-oil tar, and so on. 



Mr. W. A. Davis is responsible for the sections on 

 naphthalene and its derivatives, and phthalic acid and 

 phthaleins, Mr, W. P. Dreaper for gallic acid and its 

 allies, and Mr. Edward Horton for the aromatic acids. 



Taken as a whole, the volume has been well 

 brought up-to-date, and will, we think, still maintain 

 its place as an invaluable book of reference in the 

 laboratory, particularly of the technical chemist. Its 

 one fault to our mind is that the authors are apt to 

 be rather too discursive and rather disinclined to pur 

 the analytical particulars in a concrete form. . The 

 book professes to deal with commercial organic 

 analysis, but sometimes one has to read a very long 

 way before coming to any anahtical facts. Of course, 

 it is of great assistance to read all about the proper- 

 ties of the substance, but the exact analytical methods 

 are of the utmost importance. 



By these remarks we do not wish to detract from 

 the merits of a most valuable work, but to point out 

 where the succeeding volumes might, in our opinion, 

 be strengthened and made even more valuable. 



F. M. P. 



T AS MAN I AN SKULLS. 

 Dioptrographic Tracings in Four Normal of Fifty-two 

 Tasmanian Crania. By Prof. R. J. A. Berry and 

 A. W. D. Robertson. (Melbourne, Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. v., part i.) (Mel- 

 bourne : Kemp, 1909.) 



WITH the death of " Lalla Rhook " in 1876 one 

 of the most interesting of human races passed 

 out of existence. " When we reflect," write the 

 authors of this atlas, '" that the Tasmanian aboriginal 

 carried into our own times the primitive culture of 

 Palaeolithic man and many of the structural peculiari- 

 ties of Homo neanderthalensis we realise, the scien- 

 tific Importance of the study of Tasmanian remains." 

 They have made by far the largest contribution to tht 

 material on which our conception of the Tasmanian 

 race must be based, and made it at a most unexpected 

 period. In his well-known monograph on the Tas- 

 manian race, published two years ago, Sir William 

 Turner gave a detailed list of all the skulls then 

 known, seventy-nine in number, and was of opinion 

 that further additions were unllkeh'. The authors 01 

 this atlas have been successful In finding forty-two 

 hitherto unknown specimens, thirty-three of which 

 they discovered in various private and museum collec- 

 tions in Tasmania, while nine they unearthed from a 

 native burial ground. In preparing and publishing an 

 atlas which contains 212 accurate tracings of these 

 crania, the authors had two objects in view : they 

 wished to make the material thus discovered available 

 for the study of anthropologists throughout the world ; 

 they also wished to secure a permanent record of 

 crania which, being chiefly in the hands of private 

 owners, are liable to be lost or destroyed. 



