ARO REE 
289 
THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1899. 
INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 
Lehrbuch der Anorganischen Chemie. Von Prof. Dr. 
H. Erdmann. Pp. 728. (Brunswick: Vieweg und 
Sohn, 1898.) 
HIS book is based upon the well-known work of 
Gorup-Besanez, the last edition of which was 
published in 1878, but it is practically a new book. It 
is printed in the style of Roscoe and Schorlemmer’s 
treatise, handsomely illustrated, and well bound. In the 
728 pages a vast amount of information is given about 
the facts of inorganic chemistry, and this information is 
in most respects well abreast of the time. The treatment 
and presentation of the subject are quite orthodox, 
except in so far as the description of experiments and of 
technical applications is separated from the main text, 
and printed in smaller type after the more general and 
descriptive account of asubstance or group of substances 
has been written. 
It is, perhaps, asking a good deal that a new book on 
inorganic chemistry should differ much except in size or 
price from: contemporaneous works on the same subject. 
A perusal of the present work proceeds without any 
sense of freshness until the sections on helium and 
argon, where for the first time the personal authority of 
the writer is felt and approving interest excited. After 
this the even tenor is resumed until the second part of 
the work dealing with the metallic elements is reached. 
Here again interest is aroused, and the author may be 
congratulated on having produced a very readable 
account of what, scientifically speaking, is usually the 
dullest part of a book on inorganic chemistry. The 
accounts of technical applications which are intercalated 
in the text are very well written, interesting, and trust- 
worthy. 
The chief question raised by this book is how far theory 
is to be introduced into a book on inorganic chemistry. 
Is a book on inorganic chemistry to be a compendium of 
facts, whilst the theory is to be sought in books on general 
or physical chemistry? As a matter of fact, books on 
inorganic chetnistry written up to about 1870 included a 
discussion of all that was known of theoretical and physical 
chemistry. Till then the only important quantitative laws 
that were clearly established referred to composition, and 
accordingly the theoretical part of such books dealt 
mainly with the laws of chemical combination and the 
atomic and molecular theories. But things have advanced 
since then; we now know a great deal about chemical 
dynamics, and it seems anomalous that in such a book 
as the one under notice there should be no general ex- 
position of the laws governing chemical reactions and 
chemical equilibrium. These laws, like the laws of com- 
position, are fundamental, and the light they throw on 
every-day inorganic chemistry is indispensable fora right 
apprehension of the facts. There seems no good reason 
for neglecting them in a book of 700 pages dealing with 
inorganic chemistry. 
The theoretical part of the book is also in other respects 
the least satisfactory feature. It displays much of the 
NO. 1552, VOL. 60] 
anxious striving, to which some minds seem peculiarly 
liable, to be fundamental and logical on points where 
such exercitation is quite unnecessary and unfruitful. An 
advanced student surely does not need to be carefully 
initiated into the difference between Roman and Arabic 
numerals, or the meaning of 10%, or the impossibility of 
putting a quart of liquid into a pint pot; yet these and 
like matters are gravely and lengthily expounded. The 
effect is to submerge the salient points of doctrine in a 
sea of tedious disquisition. One cannot but wish that 
the space so used had been saved for the discussion of 
such important theoretical matters as the constitution 
of ozone, the hydration of salts, the absorption of 
hydrogen by metals, the atomic weight of tellurium— 
topics to which justice is not done in the book. 
There are some omissions and a few mistakes in the 
book. The account of flame includes the apparently 
ineradicable dogma that the hydrogen of a hydrocarbon 
burns preferentially to the carbon, and that solid particles 
of carbon are burnt up inthe mantle. ‘The rate of the 
explosive wave is confused with the velocity of inflam- 
mation, and the acetylene flame, which readily meits a 
platinum wire, is stated to be peculiarly cool. The 
blemishes in the book on matters of fact are, however, 
not many; the information is indeed, on the whole, 
admirable, and we have no doubt that Prof. Erdmann’s 
work will on this account meet the requirements of a 
large class of students. ACrSs 
MARINE BOILERS. 
Marine Boilers. ‘Wy L. E. Bertin ; translated and edited 
by L. S. Robertson, with a preface by Sir William 
White, F.R.S. Pp. xxviii + 437. (London: John 
Murray, 1898.) 
HIS is a translation, with some important alterations 
and additions, of M. Bertin’s well-known work on 
marine boilers. M. Bertin, now Director of Naval Con- 
struction for the French Navy, was previously Principal 
ofthe Ecole @application du Génie Maritime, and his 
text-book was the outcome of the course of lectures on 
boiler construction which he delivered to the students of 
that institution. 
The work has been translated by Mr. L. S. Robertson, an 
authority on the so-called water-tube boiler, and has the 
advantage of a graceful tribute to M. Bertin’s skill as an 
engineer and naval architect in the form of a preface by 
Sir William White, Chief Constructor to the British 
Navy. 
The book is copiously illustrated, but unfortunately the 
plates are sometimes by no means clear, and where 
dimensions are given it is often impossible to read 
them ; as the illustrations are reproductions of those in 
the original French work, the dimensions are in metric 
units, while all the dimensions in the text have been 
converted into English units. Fewer illustrations, more 
clearly reproduced, would have been an improvement ; 
though these remarks apply in the main to the general 
drawings only, the detail drawings being much clearer. 
The author has divided the book into four parts, and 
has covered fairly completely the whole field. Part i. is 
devoted to the important subjects of combustion, trans- 
oO 
