344 Reviews. — Liebig^s Organic Chemistry. 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. Organic Chemistry, in its application to Agri- 

 culture and Physiology. By Justus Liebig, INI. D., F. 

 R. S., &c. &,c., Professor of Chemistry in the University 

 of Giessen. Edited from the manuscript of the author, by 

 Lyon Playfair, INI. T>. First American edition, with an 

 Introduction, Notes, and Appendix, by John W. Webster, 

 M. D., Prof, of Chemistry in Harvard Univ^ersity. 1 vol. 

 12mo., pp. 435. Cambridge, Mass, 1841. 



The appearance of this work, in an American form, is 

 most fehcitous at a time when the agricuUural pubhc are 

 awakening to the importance of a greater and more studious 

 attention to other modes of enriching the soil, than those in 

 common vogue. Terms of chemical science, expressive of 

 analytical experiments in matter, are now as familiar to many 

 a farmer, as the names of his implements. Through the ef- 

 forts of Hitchcock, Dana, and Jackson, humus and geine, 

 crenic and apocrenic acids, the action of the more elegant 

 mineral manures, and their less laborious application, with 

 their remarkable results, are fast accommodating themselves 

 to ordinary perceptions, and are being better understood than 

 older theories of fertilizing the ground. The modus operandi 

 of these older manures, too, is investigated, and, in the pres- 

 ence of a few salts, or in the combination of a few acids, the 

 secrets of nature are displayed. 



Prof. Webster is to be cordially thanked for this welcome 

 specimen of his zeal and interest in behalf of American agri- 

 culture. Generally speaking, the works of foreign countries, 

 or the varied subjects of science, are the rather to be avoided 

 than sought. Extensive and fatal errors have doubtless been 

 committed by a want of proper discrimination between the 

 culture of ditierent and wide apart territories. We have been 

 too prone to borrow from abroad the experience, which does 

 not prove, in the nature of the case, equally efficacious at 

 home. The climate of England, so peculiar, may be most 

 favorable to English culture, but tliat culture would be sadly 

 injproper in our own. The sunny hills of southern France 

 may produce the luxuriant grape, yet a similar latitude in our 



