386 



NA TURE 



[February 25, 1892 



Treasury Committee that their very indefinite suggestion 

 as to the space to be provided to meet present needs 

 really referred to their view as to the maximum amount of 

 space which a Science Museum should be allowed to 

 cover. We are certain that the scientific members of that 

 Committee would repudiate any such opinion, and they 

 would quote, as we have quoted above, the actual facts 

 concerning the Natural History Museum as negativing any 

 such idea. 



Finally, it is advisable to point out the terrible 

 want of any sense of perspective on the part of the 

 Legislature on matters relating to science and art. We 

 do not object to any expenditure the Government may 

 choose to make upon art, but it is our clear duty to point 

 out that the interests of science must not be neglected in 

 order that art may be encouraged. The ^70,000 paid 

 for the land which has given rise to all this discussion is 

 the same sum as that given not long ago for a single 

 picture. The " British Luxembourg " — whatever that may 

 be — which the Government is supposed to be now foster- 

 ing, was intended to contain most of the pictures now in 

 the South Kensington Museum ; so that the edifying 

 spectacle was to have been, or indeed may yet be, seen, 

 of emptying all the picture galleries at one end of the 

 Museum while .^400,000 of public money is being ex- 

 pended—this has been agreed to by the Government 

 with alacrity— in building new picture galleries at the 

 other. Nor is this all. The Tate Gallery, if built, is to 

 be maintained by the Government : we are informed this 

 will cost at least ^4000 annually. Here, then, is another 

 endowment of, say, ^r6o,ooo for art. We do not object 

 to this if the nation so wills it ; but is it wise that all this 

 time the training of our science teachers — our great 

 requisite just now — is to be carried on in sheds, and that 

 the only concern that the Government shows in relation 

 to the Science Museum, which is to include the Patent 

 Museum, is to still absorb year after year the patent fees, 

 which ought in justice to be used for the improvement of 

 our national industries ? 



CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY. 

 Manual of Chemical Technology. By Rudolf von 

 Wagner. Translated and edited by William Crookes, 

 F.R.S., from the thirteenth enlarged German edition, 

 as remodelled by Dr. Ferdinand Fischer. With 596 

 Illustrations, 968 pages. (London : J. and A. Churchill, 

 1892.) 

 ^^ THEN a book has reached a thirteenth edition, it 

 * •^ may usually be assumed that its form and contents 

 are so familiar to all who are likely to be interested in the 

 subject of which it treats as to require no description, 

 and that it has attained so substantial a reputation as to 

 be independent alike of praise or blame flowing from the 

 pen of the critic. In the case of the book before us, 

 however, the author is no longer living ; and having com- 

 pleted in 1880 the eleventh edition of his work, the care 

 of future issues devolves upon others. There is probably 

 no subject which changes so rapidly, owing to the ad- 

 vances of science and the incessant activity of inventors, 

 as chemical technology, or the application of chemistry 

 to useful purposes in the industrial arts ; and a glance at 

 the table of contents of such a book as this is sufficient 

 NO. T165, VOL. 45] 



to remind one of the vast range of subjects with which 

 chemistry has to do. It is the extent and diversity of 

 these subjects which suggests at once the idea of the 

 difficulties which must attend the compilation of such a 

 treatise even when the work of so distinguished a tech- 

 nologist as von Wagner is carried forward by editors so 

 eminent as Dr. F. Fischer and Mr. Crookes. That they 

 have discharged their duty in no perfunctory spirit is 

 evident from the fact that many sections are entirely 

 new, and that, as compared with the eleventh German 

 edition, more than half the text and the illustrations 

 have been replaced by new matter. And further, as 

 pointed out by the English editor, a manual such as 

 this must be in many respects adapted to the conditions 

 of the country where it is written, and, if translated for 

 use elsewhere, it requires modification. The prices of 

 raw materials, of fuel, and of labour, and the laws in 

 different countries have in each case their influence upon 

 the conditions under which chemical industries are carried 

 on. As already remarked, a book in its thirteenth edition 

 must have been found useful by a good many people, but 

 the first thought that passes through the mind in turning 

 over the pages of Wagner's " Technology " is — For whom 

 can this book have been intended? It treats of every- 

 thing : of fuel and metallurgy, of water, acids, and 

 alkalies, of pigments and dyes, of glass and cements, 

 of food and fibres, of leather, soap, wood, matches, and 

 many smaller subjects. In the limits of 950 pages it is 

 not possible to provide all the details essential to each 

 process which would be sought by a manufacturer, and 

 an examination of the volume shows that the treatment 

 of the successive subjects is very unequal. The impres- 

 sion derived from its perusal is that, on the whole, it is 

 most likely to be useful to senior students or to chemists 

 who wish for general information relating to chemical 

 manufactures, but that the efforts which have evidently 

 been made to incorporate into this new edition an account 

 of modern processes are spasmodic, and not always 

 successful. 



The articles on soda and on chlorine, for example, are 

 among the best in the book. The several processes for 

 the recovery of sulphur from alkali waste, including the 

 Schafifner-Helbig and the Chance patent processes, are 

 described with some detail ; and the Weldon-Pechiney 

 process for obtaining chlorine from magnesium chloride 

 is described at length with the aid of numerous illustra- 

 tions. But even in this latter case, in view of the import- 

 ance ofthe process, which is still on its tsial, information 

 more recent than December 1887, might have been 

 expected. There is no reference to more recent pro- 

 cesses for electrolyzing alkaline chlorides ; but this, 

 perhaps, is expecting too much in the way of the " latest 

 intelligence " ; and doubtless the same remark applies to 

 the absence of any description of liquid chlorine as a com- 

 mercial article. This, however, does not account for the 

 curious error by which the number formerly given as the 

 density of liquid chlorine, r33, is assigned to the gas. 

 The admirable work of Knietsch {Annalen, 259) on the 

 properties of liquid chlorine deserves to be had in re- 

 membrance, more especially as it was done in the 

 laboratory of an alkali-works, with industrial objects in 

 view. 



A really unsatisfactory article is that which relates to 



