Feb. 17, 1882.] 



• KNOWLEDGE 



339 



Calvinist, who said that " doubtless God could have made 

 a better fruit tlian the strawberry, but doubtless he never 

 had." ' 



LAIsDAUERS BLOWPIPE ANALYSIS.* 



The second eilition of this vorj- excpUcnt little book, wliicli has 

 jn;t (last November) apiiearcil at Berlin, should have the effect 

 of causing Freiberg to look to its laurels, or that time-honoured 

 hcad-quartei's of I'lattner, Kiehter, aud the blowpipe, will liave to 

 give place to Brunswick, where this work is written. 



I believe Herr I.andauer was the first, and is now one of the few 

 German writers on this subject, to point out that blowpipe analysis 

 properly studied, is a strictly chemical, qualitative process '" in the 

 dr}' way," by which the constituents of minerals, as of any other 

 inorganic substances, may be, if possible, separated ; and, if separa- 

 tion is impossible, at all events, exliibited so as to bo easily and 

 separately recognised in presence of each other. It is most 

 creditable to Landauer's scientific conscientiousness and literary 

 intrepidity, that he should venture to affirm and reiterate tliis great 

 truth, in opjx)sition to the teaching of such eminent chemists as the 

 venerable Von Kobell. of Munich ; of the '"great shade" of Berze- 

 lius ; and even of the departed Plattner himself. All these eraiiient 

 writers, and some scarcely less respected than they in America, as 

 Professor Brush, have laid down and taught what may be termed 

 a " mineral coiu-so of analysis " as contra-distinguished from a 

 chemical course, in which the reactions of minerals per se, and not 

 ill pnrtibus — as a la^vj-er would call it — are given. Thus it liappcns 

 that even our best mineralogies are defaced by such distressing 

 descriptions of tlie blowpipe analysis of minerals, as " fusible on 

 edge" ; " melts to a blebb^ glass, &c., &c. 



In England, I have been tn'ing for the last ten years (a paper of 

 mine on the subject was read before the Royal Society in 1872) to 

 preach the same 'dry," analytical doctrine; but, as might be ex- 

 pected, liave been simply "pooh-poohed" for my pains here. It 

 really seems, however, from the rapidly -succeeding edition of this 

 book, and its translation into English and Italian, as though Lan- 

 dauer woidd succeed where I have failed, and teach English as well 

 as German "blowpipers" better (analytical) manners in the future. 

 Unfortunately, it cannot be said that the Manchester translators 

 of this work have been at all successful in rendering what the author 

 has stated in Gennan, into precisely equivalent English, or indeed, 

 in some i>laces, into anything like what he has said. For instance, 

 at page 10, Landauer says of mj' aluminium plate reactions : "The 

 I best substitute for charcoal is the aluminium plate introduced by 

 Boss";+ which plain sentence and note, the Manchester trans- 

 mntntlnnists have replaced by the following ingenious rendering. 

 "As another kind of substitute for charcoal, aluminium plate may 

 be advantageously employed." Many other instances might be 

 I pointed out, if space permitted. 



It must be admitted that Landauer, With considerable reference to 



the American writers Eklerhorst and Egleston, to his celebrated 



countryman Bunsen, and to myself, has contrived a " strictly 



I chemical " system of blowpipe analysis, so far as a persistence in 



I the use of the stupid reagents borax and microcosniic (or, as it is 



now called, "phosphor") salt, permitted. But such a system with 



I these reagents is simply impossible ; and Sorby, Wiinder. Rose, and 



I others have long ago shown that it is equally impossible to obtain 



1 dtjinite pyrological crystallisations from the fusion of oxides, Ac, in 



I borax before the blowpipe. The plain fact is, as I pointed out ten 



years ago in my paper (vol. x.";. " Proceedings Royal Society") that 



boric acid will separate the constituents of most minerals and 



inorganic chemical combinations before the blowpipe ; whilst boraj:, 



or any other reagent, will nrt. Landauer's book is tlividcd into four 



chapters and a reprint of I'lattner'a well-known blowpipe tables. In 



the lirst cliapter (of fifteen jiages) a description of apparatus and 



reagents is given. In the second (forty-six pages), an excellent 



account of the necessary operations, inclnding my " Aluminium 



Plate Reactions" (ten pages). An " Appendix" to this chapter ia 



devoted entirely (eighteen pages) to " Bunsen's flame-reactions," 



tho connection of which, by the way, with the blowpipe, it is difficult 



to perceive, but it is placed in the book and ''table of contents" 



as the third chapter, though called an "appendix." The so-called 



third is headed— after the arrangement in Schcerer's and Blan- 



ford's little book — " Special Examination for certain Combined 



Substances," whereby the reader is left to infer that all the other 



examinations, in many cases the best and most careful, are not 



* " Die Lothrohranalyse, Anleitnng zu qualitativen chemischen 

 Untersnchnngen auf trockenem VTege, bearbeitet von J. Landauer. 

 ' Zweite vermehrte Anflage." (Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer, 

 1881. London agents : Triibner & Co.) 

 t Rose, " PjTology, or Fire Chemistry." London : 1875. 



" special." The fourth chapter describes the author's and Egles- 

 ton's " Systematischo Gango " (very good Scotch as well as 

 German) or ciirricuia; which are both excellent in their way. 



At page 3 is given a beautiful woodcut, with a remark that " it 

 is to be specially recommended," of what is called "Rub's 

 StaudlOthrohr " (Unb's stand blowjiipc), which is not figured in the 

 JIanchester translation (lb7!l)i because it was not invented by mo 

 till 1S80, in September of which year a description, w ith drawings, 

 appeared in the Knglish Mechanic. It is, in fact, a month-blow- 

 pipe with elastic air-reservoir and valve attached, precisely tho same 

 as that recently described by me in Kxowlkdge, vol. i., page 137 : 

 only the uncomfortable addition of a huge metallic dish-cover kind 

 of protection to the indiarubber balloon is made, by which all por- 

 tability and simplicity are ingeniously destroyed. This seems to 

 nie too great a sacrifice to make for the sake of elastic bags, which 

 ought not to cost more than a farthing each. I feel snro that if 

 M. Landauer sees this notice, he will at once repudiate all know- 

 ledge of my invention when he inserttul Uab's ilrawing and descrip- 

 tion in his book, whicli I can cordially recommend to your readers 

 as the best extant on the old system of blowiiipe analysis. 



SCIENCE FOR ALL. 



Messks. C.\ssELt,, Petter, & Galpin call attention to a misprint 

 in the footnote to the review of the last volume of their " Science 

 for All." The price of the volume is not 5s., but 9s. We note that 

 no price is mentioned, bat thought we remembered seeing the 

 work advertised for the price named ; also, the book sent us was, it 

 appears, the fourth, not the fifth, volume. We took it for granted 

 the latest had been sent. Our remarks ap|)ly to Volume IV., not to 

 Volume V. The volumes are unnumbered. Mr. Denning writes 

 (unfortunately at much too great length for insertion), noting that 

 many of the highest authorities — Sir J. llerschel, Webb, Ac. — accept 

 the eccentricity of the ring-system as an established fact. That 

 the rings have at times been eccentrically situated is well known ; 

 at other times there has been no recognisable eccentricity. Mr. 

 Denning seems to think that saying the Satumian rings " will be 

 seen at night as a vivid semicircle of light" needed no correction, 

 although the rings are absolutely invisible from large portions of 

 them, not visible as a vivid semicircle at any time from any part of 

 Saturn except the equator, and not visible from the northern 

 hemisphere during one half of the Satumian year, or from the 

 southern hemisphere during the other half. We venture to say 

 that every reader would suppose Jlr. Denning's statement to mean 

 that if you were placed anywhere on Saturn, you would at night see 

 tlie rings as a vivid semicircle of light. We submit that the state- 

 ment is as incorrect as the following would be:— On the earth, 

 the sun is visible for twelve hours out of the twenty-four. Wo are 

 sorry if Mr. Denning objects to being set right in a matter about 

 which there are no two opinions among jjersons competent to form 

 an opinion at all — that is, in this case, among mathematicians (for 

 the question is purely mathematical). 



T 



NIGHT MINIMA OF ALGOL. 18«2. 



HE following list of night minima of Algol, by the eminent 

 observer of Variable Stars, Mr. Jos. Baxendell, will be much 



valued by many readers. — Ed. 



Gbeexwicu Mean Time. 



Feb. 



March 



April 



Jui'y 

 Aug. 



Sept. 



IS 13 22 



Sept. 



