300 



NA TURE 



[March 9, 1922 



ambiguous^, since the list to which it refers includes not 

 only the Rorquals, but also the Greenland whale. It 

 appears from another page that the whalebone of the 

 Greenland whale fetched 1250Z. a ton in 1901, and even 

 this falls far short of the highest price it is known to 

 have reached. 



Some points might have been brought out more 

 clearly by relegating details to tables in which one 

 year could easily have been compared with another. 

 By setting these facts out at length in his main narrative 

 the author has failed, to some extent, to give a correct 

 perspective of the general trend of events. There can 

 be no doubt that whales have diminished in number, 

 and Dr. Jenkins's book will do real service if, by calling 

 attention to the history of the past, it awakens interest 

 in the urgent necessity of so regulating the industry 

 as to avoid the disaster of completing the destruction 

 of animals which must rank as among the most wonder- 

 ful of mammals. The book contains much information 

 extracted from State papers and other old records at 

 home and abroad, special attention having been given 

 to the Dutch whaling literature. Many of these docu- 

 ments are so inaccessible that the gratitude of zoologists 

 is due to Dr. Jenkins for this service. 



Inorganic Chemistry as a Science. 



Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie in vier Bdnden 

 Edited by Prof. R. Abegg and Dr. Fr. Auerbach. 

 Vierter Band. Erste Abteilung, zweite Hdlfte. Die 

 Elemente der sechsten Gruppe des periodischen Systems. 

 Zweite Hdlfte. Edited by Dr. Fr. Auerbach. Pp. 

 xiii+1072. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1921.) 140 marks. 



ALL chemists will rejoice at the appearance of 

 another volume of the well-known Abegg- 

 Auerbach " Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry," and 

 we desire to offer Dr. Fr. Auerbach our hearty con- 

 gratulations on his success in carrying on so worthily 

 the great work begun by Abegg. The last volume, 

 dealing with F, CI, Br, I, and Mn, appeared in 1913. 

 As the editor states in the preface, the appearance of 

 the present volume has been delayed by the European 

 war. It deals with the elements Cr, Mo, W, and U, 

 which belong to the sixth group of the periodic table. 

 It is intended that O, S, Se, and Te shall be dealt with 

 in a later volume. 



The authorship of the monographs contained in the 

 present volume is as follows : Chromium, Molybdenum, 

 and Tungsten, J. Koppel ; Uranium, R. J, Meyer; 

 Hetero-poly-acids, A. Rosenheim. 



The famous writer of the articles on atomic weights 

 in the previous volumes — Brauner — has now dropped 

 NO. 2732, VOL. 109 



out and his place is taken by J. Meyer. Similarly we 

 miss the name of Lottermoser in connection with the 

 articles dealing with colloid chemistry, these being now 

 written by G. jander. 



A very important part of the volume under review 

 is the extensive monograph by Rosenheim on the 

 hetero-poly-acids and their salts. Although the cor- 

 responding complex anions may be derived from 

 elements other than those dealt with in this volume, 

 these compounds have been treated as a single group 

 and included in the present volume, since molybdenum 

 and tungsten are amongst the constituents which occur 

 most frequently in these anionic complexes. This is 

 a happy idea and a most useful one, for the monograph 

 by Rosenheim is probably the first really comprehensive 

 and satisfactory survey of this difficult subject that has 

 appeared. 



Of the 1064 pages (omitting the subject index) in 

 the present volume, 465 are occupied by the article 

 on chromium. This is undoubtedly one of the finest 

 chemical monographs ever written and must have cost 

 the author an immense amount of thought, labour, 

 and time. We all owe him a great debt of thanks for 

 his splendid work. Attention may be directed specially 

 to his exhaustive treatment of the complex chromi- 

 ammines (which alone occupies eighty-two pages), the 

 anionic chromi-complexes, the passivity and " electro- 

 motive " behaviour of chromium, and the hetero- 

 geneous equilibria in which chromium compounds are 

 involved. 



Under tungsten there is an excellent account of the 

 tungsten filament lamp and the methods of preparing 

 and treating metallic tungsten, while the monograph 

 on uranium and its compounds by R. J. Meyer con- 

 tains a very good account of the physical chemistry of 

 the uranyl compounds. 



But where everything is so good, it is difficult to 

 select any special part for particular mention. Thus 

 the articles on atomic weights and on colloid chemistry 

 by J. Meyer and G. Jander respectively appear to be 

 quite up to the high standard set in previous volumes. 

 We can give the present volume no higher praise than 

 to say that it would have rejoiced the heart of Abegg. 

 Of the great " Handbook " it can still be said that it 

 must be in the possession of, or readily accessible to, 

 every scientific chemist, whatever may be his special 

 occupation or province of work. It constitutes a re- 

 writing of inorganic chemistry on the basis of the 

 pioneer work of Mendeleeff, Gibbs, Rooseboom, Thom- 

 sen, Arrhenius, van't Hoff, Ostwald, Nernst, Abegg, 

 Bodlander and Werner. It does for the present 

 generation what the great work of Gmehn did for a 

 previous one. It utilises thermodynamics and the 

 theory of ions in carrying inorganic chemistry another 



