April 12, 1877] 



NATURE 



507 



consumed the solitary hare they had shot on the 

 way out. The story of their return journey is in- 

 tensely interesting. On June 7, when they had still forty 

 miles to go, and doubtless were rear the end of their 

 provisions, Lieut. Parr — whose untiring energy and ad- 

 mirable "road-making" made him the very perfection of 

 companions for Commander Markham — started alone on 

 a desperate walk to the ship for assistance. They had only 

 eleven good lef;;s out of thirty-four in the party, and " even 

 some of these are shaky," says Markham on May 25. 

 Fortunately two of them, both excellent, remained to 

 Parr a fortnight later. The first death of the party hap- 

 pened next day, but the day after, June 9, late in the 

 evening, relief came. Parr's wonderful walk — far more 

 memorable than Weston's or O'Leary's— probably saved 

 the lives of one or two men of the gallant party which 

 has come nearest of any human being, possibly nearest of 

 ai.y living creature, to the solitude of the North Pole. 



Space alone prevents us dwelling on the equally in- 

 teresting work done by Aldrich on the northern shore of 

 the American continent, and by Beaumont on North 

 Greenland. The names of Markham, Aldrich, Beau- 

 mont, Parr, and Sir George Nares, have been added 

 definitively to the long list of our Arctic heroes. Few 

 things have been finer in seamanship than Sir George 

 Nares' passage up Smith's Sound and Robeson Channel 

 into the Palseocrystic sea and home again. The skill 

 with which he devised and combined the exploring par- 

 ties and prepared everything so that the utmost was 

 accomplished which it was possible for brave men to 

 accomplish without useless sacrifice of human life, has 

 scarcely yet received sufficient acknowledgment either 

 from his country or from the public. 



ANTHRACEN 



Anthracen J its Constitution, Properties, Manufacture, 

 and Derivatives, incljiditig Artificial Alizarin, 

 Anihrapurpurin, &^c., with their Applications in 

 Dyeing- and Printing. By G. Auerbach. Translated 

 and edited by WiUiam Crookes, F.R.S. (London : 

 Longmans, Green, and Co., 1877.) 



FROM the extent to which the anthracene and arti- 

 ficial alizarin industries have grown within the last 

 few years, and the interest taken in them in England, it 

 has been deemed advisable to bring forward an English 

 edition of Auerbach's text-book on the above subject. This 

 work has been carried out by Mr. W. Crookes, from a 

 revised manuscript supplied by the author. 



In the author's preface to this volume we are told that 

 since the production of the first German edition four 

 years ago, from the amount of new facts recently brought 

 to light, it has been found necessary to make various 

 additions, so as to render the treatise complete up to the 

 present date. The arrangement of the earlier edition has 

 been to a certain extent adhered to, but made rather more 

 systematic, placing certain of the compounds in groups to 

 admit of easy reference. 



At the commencement a short acccount of anthracene 

 is given, and reference made to the first investigations of 

 the body, by Dumas and Laurent in 1832, and the later 

 discoveries of Fritzsche, Anderson, Berthelot, Graebe, and 

 Liebermann, with some remarks on the views entertained 



by these two latter chemists, with regard to the constitu- 

 tion of anthracene and its derivatives. After describing 

 the physical properties of this body, and the different 

 modes in which it may be formed, a full description is 

 entered into of its manufacture on a large scale, from 

 coal tar, according to the results obtained by E. Kopp, 

 who has made a careful study of the preparation of 

 anthracene from soft pitch. A description is also given 

 of the furnace best adapted for the distillation of the 

 pitch, and the different methods for purifying the crude 

 anthracene by extraction with heavy naphtha, and subli- 

 mation. 



In treating of the methods for the valuation of crude 

 anthracene, the older processes in which it may be ex- 

 tracted by means of alcohol or carbon disulphide are 

 mentioned, from their having to a certain extent an his- 

 torical interest, but which have been superseded by the 

 method of Luck, in which greater accuracy is obtained. 

 This latter method depends on the conversion of anthra- 

 cene into the theoretical quantity of anthraquinon when 

 dissolved in glacial acetic acid and boiled with chromic 

 acid. A full description is given of the hydrides of 

 anthracene, and its chlorine and bromine derivatives. In 

 the description of anthraquinon, before entering upon its 

 properties and manufacture, the various methods in which 

 it may be synthetically formed are discussed, among 

 others, the method of Bayer and Caro, by means of which 

 the anthraquinon derivatives may be formed from phthalic 

 acid and phenolene ; the discovery of which method has 

 added much to a clearer conception of the nature of 

 anthraquinon. 



The latter half of the volume deals with the history and 

 preparation of natural and artificial aUzarin, and the con- 

 sideration of its derivatives. In describing the different 

 processes for the preparation of artificial alizarin, mention 

 is made of the improvement on former methods intro- 

 duced by Graebe, Liebermann, and Caro, in which they 

 produce it from monosulphanthraquinonate of soda ; the 

 advantage claimed by these over the other methods being 

 the direct conversion of anthracene into bisulphanthra- 

 cenic acid, and its transformation into bisulphanthra- 

 quinonic acid by cheap oxidising agents. 



Anthraflavic acid, chrysammic acid, purpurin and their 

 derivatives receive full consideration, and an appendix is 

 attached containing some practical receipts for dyeing 

 with purpurin and artificial alizarin. 



The volume concludes with a most valuable biblio- 

 graphy embracing a list of the substances treated of 

 throughout the work arranged in alphabetical order, with 

 the names of the authors who have written on that 

 particular branch of the subject, and with exact reference 

 to the journals in which the researches have been pub- 

 lished. As papers on the different subjects mentioned in 

 the volume are scattered over many different periodicals, 

 the completeness with which this bibliography has been 

 arranged will prove a most valuable assistance to those 

 who wish to consult the original memoirs. 



We observe that throughout the edition Mr. Crookes 

 has retained the German mode of writing anthracene 

 without the final " e " ; this may be unimportant, but it is 

 not the method usually adopted in English text-books. 

 There is a slight mistake at the top of page 157 in the 

 use of the term '' ferrous " instead of " ferric." This is 



