March 22, 1906] 



NA TURE 



483 



add, when a new edition is called for, a few par- 

 ticulars 'of the mining law of Newfoundland, the 

 oldest British colony, where copper and iron-ore 

 mining: are actively carried on; of the West Indies, 

 where, in Trinidad and Barbados, asphalt mining is 

 of some importance ; of British New Guinea, where 

 gold mines are worked; and of Nigeria, where some 

 tin ore is raised. Bennett H. Brough. 



ORGANIC CHEMISTRY APPLIED TO 

 PHYSIOLOGY. 

 Outlines of Pliysiological Chemistry. By Dr. S. P. 

 Beebe and Prof. B. H. Buxton. Pp. vii+195. 

 (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London: Mac- 

 millan and Co., Ltd., 1904.) Price 6s. 6d. net. 



THE book deals chiefly with the theoretical side of 

 organic chemistry as applied to physiology. The 

 first chapter, of twenty-one pages, contains an account 

 of the following matters : — dissociation in solution, 

 nomenclature of acids, chemical equilibrium, catalysis, 

 colloids and crystalloids, colloidal solutions of metals, 

 aggregation, suspension and precipitation, oxidation 

 and reduction, osmotic pressure, calculations of a 

 formula, reasons why reactions take place, graphic 

 formula;, and ultimate analysis. 



It need scarcely be added that the space is entirely 

 inadequate to treat of such a heterogeneous collection 

 of chemical problems, even were it profitable to put 

 them in such juxtaposition. The student who has 

 made any study of general chemistry does not need the 

 chapter, and one who has not will scarcely be able to 

 grasp it in the condensed and jumbled form in which 

 it is here presented to him for the first time. 



It would hence have been no loss if the book had 

 commenced with the elementary organic chemistry 

 of chapter ii., so as to leave all the space for this, 

 which is the proper introduction to the subject of the 

 book. 



A description of the groups of organic compounds 

 most interesting to the physiological chemist is given 

 in chapters ii. to v., of the proteid molecule, 

 its component parts and disintegration products in 

 chapter vi., of enzymes in chapter vii., and an out- 

 line of the antitoxin theory, &c. , under the title of 

 " Disease and Immunity," forms chapter viii. and 

 concludes the volume. 



This latter part of the book is on the whole well 

 and clearly written, but it might be made much, more 

 interesting by the authors breaking, even more fre- 

 quently than they do, their intention of saying nothing 

 about practical work. A description of organic com- 

 pounds and their relationships, without any statement 

 of what experiments the knowledge of these relation- 

 ships is based upon, forms only dry and unprofitable 

 reading. For example, it would be much better if 

 the reader were told how the purin bases, or hexone 

 bases, are separated, and would not have taken up a 

 vast amount of space. Without some such instruc- 

 tion, these bodies are only uninteresting names which 

 weary the reader. 



The style of the authors is also such as may en- 

 courage a too-realistic belief in the mind of the junior 

 NO 1X99, VOL. 73] 



chemist in the graphic formula; which form the 

 organic chemist's rosary. Thus at the opening of 

 chapter v. there occurs the statement, "The chains 

 of C atoms have a tendency to curl over and join at 

 the two ends, forming in this way a closed chain." 

 At another passage in the volume one reads of " the 

 excretion of benzene rings." The account of the 

 chemistry of the proteid molecule is very clear and 

 well arranged, and this portion of the book may be 

 recommended to the physiological chemist interested 

 in the organic chemistry of proteids. 



Benjamin Moore. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 Lectures on the Theory of Functions of Real 



Variables. Vol. i. By J. Pierpont. Pp. xii + 560. 



(London and Boston : Ginn and Co., n.d.) Price 



20s. net. 

 This is emphatically a text-book, deductive in method 

 and Euclidean in arrangement; as such, it has the 

 defects of its qualities, but its merits are undeniable. 

 In this volume the author deals with the elementary 

 notions of rational and irrational number, point aggre- 

 gates, function, continuity, differentiation and inte- 

 gration. The subject last mentioned occupies pp. 

 333~5 DO > so tnat conditions of integrability, change of 

 order of integration, upper and lower integrals, &c, 

 receive a proper amount of attention. It should be 

 noted, too, that although it is confessedly incomplete, 

 the discussion of maxima and minima of functions of 

 two or more variables is satisfactory as far as it goes, 

 a most unusual circumstance as things are at present. 

 Perhaps the most valuable feature of novelty is that 

 the author occasionally criticises arguments once 

 thought sufficient, but now known to be fallacious, 

 illustrating by examples the way in which the de- 

 fective proofs break down. This is an excellent way 

 of making a student feel the necessity of mastering 

 the more refined methods of recent analysis. There 

 is one point in which the author has not quite done 

 justice to his authorities. After explaining Cantor's 

 theory of irrational numbers, he gives a brief sketch 

 of Dedekind's method of partitions, but he does not 

 give this in its genuine form. The essence of a 

 partition is that it divides all rational numbers (with 

 the possible exception of one) into two classes, each 

 element of one class being less than each of the other. 

 After this definition it is proved that the aggregate 

 of partitions is continuous. Prof. Pierpont (p. 82) 

 defines a partition as dividing all real numbers into 

 two classes; this enables him to use Dedekind's nota- 

 tion, when convenient, but it does not give a just 

 idea of Dedekind's theory, and this is a pity. For 

 bibliographical details the reader is referred to the 

 " Encyclopadie der mathematischen Wissenschaften "; 

 this is all very well for those who have access to that 

 work, but in the interests of the student it would be 

 well to give a list of the most important original 

 sources. It ought to be said that in his preface the 

 author acknowledges his special obligation to Jordan, 

 Stolz, and Vallee-Poussin ; at the same time it is 

 evident that he has made use of this and other 

 material in an independent way. 



Sound and Rhythm. By W. Edmunds. Pp. xii + 

 96 ; and Box of Models of the Human Ear. (Lon- 

 don : Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1906.) Price 

 2s. 6d. net. 

 This is an admirable little book. The elements of 

 physiological acoustics are described with remarkable 

 lucidity and accuracy, and there is a wealth of illustra- 



