526 



NATURE 



[September 29, 1904 



duced necessarily afford partial relief or re-adjustment 

 to somewhat remote and disconnected seats of pressure 

 during the moments of oscillation. Similar causes in 

 the American fields have led to the appearance of gas 

 in wells that at first produced only oil or water, and 

 vice versa, and in some cases a renewal of commercial 

 activity in an abandoned field has been the result of 

 operations at some distance away. 



Apart from the defects referred to, the work is 

 worthy of praise, for the engineering details, which 

 constitute the bulk, are given in a form convenient 

 for reference, and it is only needful to warn technical 

 readers against too implicit acceptance of the author's 

 views on some still unsettled scientific problems. 



CHEMISTRY OF ALKALOIDS. 

 The Vegetable Alkaloids, with Particular Reference to 

 their Chemical Constitution. By Dr. Am6 Pictet. 

 From the second French edition. Rendered into 

 English, revised and enlarged, with the author's 

 sanction, by H. C. Biddle, Ph.D. Pp. i.-vii. and 

 i~SoS- (New York : John Wiley and Sons ; London : 

 Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1904.) 



THIS translation of the second edition of Pictet 's 

 " La Constitution chimique des Alcaloides 

 veg^taux," with the numerous additions made by the 

 translator, will be welcomed by many readers, for 

 nearly seven years have elapsed since the appearance 

 of the original, and in the interval great advances have 

 been made in our knowledge of the alkaloids. The 

 book is in no sense a monograph, as references to the 

 sources, modes of extraction and detection, and physio- 

 logical properties of the alkaloids are of the briefest, 

 attention being concentrated on their purely chemical 

 behaviour, and the clues thus given to their constitution 

 and synthesis. A brief survey of the history of this 

 important group of compounds is followed by a section 

 dealing with pyridine, quinoline, and their derivatives, 

 including the carbo.xylic acids which have played so 

 important a part in the elucidation of the molecular 

 structure of the plant bases. The remainder of the 

 book summarises what is known of the chemical be- 

 haviour of twenty-eight groups of alkaloids, and in a 

 final chapter a list is given of forty-two alkaloids of 

 unknown constitution. It should be added that 

 numerous references to original papers are supplied 

 in footnotes. 



All attempts to define an alkaloid by reference to 

 chemical constitution have proved to be unsatisfactory. 

 Restriction of the term to derivatives of pyridine, as 

 was proposed by Koenigs, would exclude morphine 

 and the xanthine bases, such as caffeine, and its 

 extension to cyclic bases found in plants, whilst in- 

 cluding these alkaloids, would not embrace such sub- 

 stances as asparagine, choline, and trimethylamine. 

 The author employs the term in its widest sense, and 

 groups together as alkaloids all those substances which 

 are directly obtained from plants and able to unite with 

 acids to form salts. 



The systematic chemical investigation of the 

 alkaloids, dating from 1869, when the constitution of 

 pyridine was made clear, has been pursued with a 

 NO. 1822, VOL. 70] 



remarkable degree of success. Putting aside acyclic 

 compounds, constitutional formulae have been assigned 

 to some twenty-five bases, including such well known 

 substances as morphine, quinine, atropine, cocaine, 

 nicotine, and caffeine; and although less is known of 

 the molecular structure of the others, it is significant 

 of the energy with which inquiry has been pressed 

 in this direction, that more than one hundred alkaloids 

 — about one-half of the number recognised as definite 

 chemical substances — have been examined with at least 

 some measure of success. Whether the formulae now 

 regarded as probable will survive in every case may be 

 open to doubt ; it is, however, a striking testimony to 

 the success attending modern methods of unravelling 

 molecular structure, that in the case of no fewer than 

 twelve of the twenty-five formulae just mentioned the 

 constitution assigned on the basis of analytical evidence 

 has been confirmed by the synthetical preparation of 

 the alkaloid. Much of this work has been done since 

 the appearance of the French edition, and reference in 

 particular may be made to the syntheses of the bella- 

 donna and coca alkaloids, and of the xanthine bases, 

 accounts of which have been supplied by the translator, 

 and form, perhaps, the most interesting chapters in 

 the book. 



The translator has done his work successfully on 

 the whole, but it is to be regretted that more attention 

 has not been paid to the nomenclature of carbon com- 

 pounds. The Chemical Society in this country — in the 

 annual reprint of instructions to its staff of abstractors 

 — and the Geneva Congress, have done much to 

 associate definite suffixes with particular groups of 

 compounds, and it may be hoped that, nowadays, no 

 author of a chemical text-book in English on this side 

 of the Atlantic would, for example, write " benzol " 

 and " pyrrol " for benzene and pyrrole respectively. 

 In a new edition the use of laboratory slang should 

 be avoided. Expressions such as " nitrogen-methyl- 

 ated " (p. 135), " it does not react alkaline " (p. 143), 

 " dimethylcytisine will add methyl iodide " (p. 180), 

 and " as a starting substance " (p. 22S) are not happily 

 chosen; whilst curiosity is stimulated by the statement 

 that " a decomposition similar to this [the elimination 

 of methylamine from tropine] is effected by the de- 

 structive distillation of Hofmann " (p. 204), since 

 details of the latter process have so far been withheld 

 from publication. W. P. W. 



NICKEL STEELS. 

 Lcs .Applications des .icicrs au Nickel, avec tin 

 .ippendice sur la Theorie des Aciers an Nickel, By 

 Ch. Ed. Guillaume. Pp. vii + 215. (Paris : 

 Gauthier-Villars, 1904.) Price 3.50 francs. 



A PROMINENT feature of the progress of steel 

 during the last quarter of a century or so is the 

 continued advance in the discovery and ever-widening 

 practical application of what are known to the maker 

 as " special " steels. " Ordinary " steels contain 

 essentially certain well defined and usually small pro- 

 portions of carbon, silicon, and manganese, varied to 

 suit specific purposes, while sulphur, phosphorus, and 

 even arsenic, though not desired, are seldom entirely 



