January 7, 191 5] 



NATURE 



503 



{3) Methods of Quantitative Organic Analysis. 

 By P. C. R. Kingscott and R. S. G. Knight. 

 Pp. xvi + 283. (London: Longmans, Green and 

 Co., 1914.) Price 6s. 6d. net. 



(4) Elementary Household Chemistry, an Intro- 

 ■uctory Text-hook for Students of Home 

 Economics. By Prof. J. F. Snell. Pp. viii + 

 307. (New York : The Macmillan Co. ; Lon- 

 don : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 

 55. 6d. net. 



< I } \ ^ / ^ fancy that reviewers of a new book 

 VV would generally appeal first to the 

 preface to learn the object of its author in com- 

 mitting his ideas to print, then try to discover, 

 especially in an elementary text-book, any origin- 

 ality in the method of treatment or arrangement, 

 and finally read the descriptive part. Taking 

 these points in reference to this little " first book 

 of chemistry," it is interesting and satisfactory 

 to learn that it follows no particular syllabus and 

 so gives the author entire freedom in his method 

 of treatment. Books on elementary chemistry 

 are so numerous that there seems to be little room 

 for novelty either in arrangement, description, or 

 experimental illustration, and we have failed to 

 discover anything intrinsically new; but such ex- 

 periments as have been selected^ are simple and 

 suggestive in character, and the illustrations which 

 accompany them are unusually good. The treat- 

 ment is essentially qualitative and non-theoretical. 

 There is no attempt to impose on a student anv 

 immature notion of what chemical changes denote. 

 He studies them in great variety and observes 

 their results. He is troubled with no atomic 

 theory, no symbols, and no equations. He learns 

 a lot of hard experimental facts in the first fifteen 

 chapters, and in the sixteenth and last he obtains 

 a little glimpse into the quantitative relations of 

 the reactions he has examined. 



We can conceive of no better introduction to 

 chemistry than this book provides. 



(2) The volume has been written to cover the 

 new syllabus of the Board of Education and 

 possibly to meet the needs of candidates for 

 medical examinations in organic chemistrv. 



In his preface the author points out that there 

 are two distinct and incompatible systems of im- 

 parting a knowledge of organic chemistn.- by 

 means of a text-book, one being based upon the 

 theoretical, and the other on the practical, point 

 of view. Why they are incompatible is not 

 apparent; for even.^ theoretical statement must 

 be built upon an experimental foundation and, to 

 be logical, a clear statement of the experimental 

 part should either precede or at least accompany 

 the theory. For the author, it should be added, 

 XO. 2358, VOL. 94] 



assumes that the reader is entirely unfamiliar with 

 the nature of organic substances. To illustrate 

 the author's method, we may refer to the para- 

 graph on page 2, that is, at the very commence- 

 ment of the book, before any description of an 

 organic substance is given. " Now it has been 

 found that when methane is treated with chlorine 

 in diffused daylight, a mixture is obtained of 

 products which contain carbon, hydrogen, and 

 chlorine, together with one which contains only 

 carbon and chlorine. On separating these sub- 

 stances by fractional distillation and analysini^ 

 [the italics are the reviewer's] them we find the 

 composition of the various pure constituents may 

 be expressed by the formulae : CH3CI, CHoCL, 

 CHCI3, CCI4." 



Without inquiring too closely into how these 

 four substances, one of which is a gas, can be 

 separated by fractional distillation, or how the 

 formulae can be ascertained by an ordinary ana- 

 lysis, we would point out that the student is left 

 quite in the dark as to the nature of any one of 

 the three operations referred to. 



Of the two incompatible systems, it seems 

 preferable to the wiiter to attempt to memorise 

 the description of a series of experiments, which 

 he can understand and visualise, even if he has 

 not the opportunty of performing them, than to 

 learn by heart the mere names of ojierations which 

 have not been explained and, in the present 

 case, are incapable of giving the results sug- 

 gested. 



Supposing, however, that a practical course of 

 instruction accompanied or preceded the perusal 

 of this book, so that the student was able to 

 realise the significance of the expressions "treat 

 with" or "react with," which frequently recur, 

 and the practical meaning of the series of equa- 

 tions which fill (without any description of the 

 substances involved) the first eighty pages, the 

 book, though overloaded with formulae, should be 

 of considerable help in acquiring a knowledge of 

 the structure of a large number of groups of com- 

 pounds and of equations representing fundamental 

 reactions. 



(3) This volume, which has been compiled with 

 evident care by its authors, is of a sound, prac- 

 tical, and useful character, and should commend 

 itself to chemists in general and to organic 

 chemists in particular. 



The information here collected is not always 

 easy to obtain, unless the reader has had recourse 

 to the German of Hans Meyer. So far as the 

 writer can judge the methods described are well 

 established and of considerable value. 



If one criticism may be offered, it is that the 



