436 



NA TURE 



[Marc/i II, 1886 



be sorry to lay down a hard-and-fast rule. The order of 

 educational exposition is not necessarily identical with 

 that of scientific discovery. Facts are more readily re- 

 membered if the principle connecting them is known 

 beforehand. And if a teacher, by offering a few pre- 

 liminary generalities, can peptonise a rather indigestible 

 mental nutriment, why should he, on purely doctrinaire 

 grounds, be forbidden to do so.? Did Dr. Morley ever 

 read a novel, and if so, did he never yield to the human 

 temptation of anticipating the course of the narrative by 

 looking at the end ? 



Dr. Morley has distributed the general reactions 

 throughout the text, calling attention to them, however, 

 by printing them in spaced type. The theoretical sections 

 are as a rule brief, but to the point. An excellent account 

 of the benzene theory is introduced ; but we would point 

 out that Hiibner has given a simpler proof of the exist- 

 ence of the symmetrical meta pair of hydrogen atoms 

 than that of Wroblewsky quoted by Dr. Morley: this 

 proof is based upon leactions of the two nitro-salicylic 

 acids. 



The selection of facts is judicious, and, inasmuch as 

 Dr. Morley's plan demanded that each compound should 

 be treated of with considerable fulness, the student can 

 hardly turn to any section of the book without learning 

 all that is of real importance under that head. 



Several inaccuracies have crept into the book, although 

 they are not sufficiently numerous to interfere seriously 

 with its usefulness. In his preface Dr. Morley acknow- 

 ledges his indebtedness to Beilstein's treatise in his search 

 for facts, and we fear that he has not always been suffi- 

 ciently careful to ascertain how far Beilstein's statements 

 are traversed by more recent experimental results. 



Thus on p. 136 the author introduces glycerin ether 

 —formerly dear to classification as the only example of 

 the ether of a trihydric alcohol. But Tollens and Loe 

 have shown that, whatever this compound may be, it is 

 certainly not an ether of glycerin. 



On p. 389 it is stated as a universal rule, that, in the 

 conversion of diazo-compounds into substituted azo-com- 

 pounds, " where nitrogen becomes attached to an atom of 

 carbon in a benzene nucleus, the nitrogen takes up a para- 

 position with regard to one of the groups already present." 

 Mazzara, Witt, Liebermann, and Griess have shown that 

 the nitrogen may also take up the ortho-position. 



Following Beilstein the author has altered Wertheim's 

 formula for conhydrine, CgHi^NO, into CgHijNO. This 

 has of course been done in order to bring Wertheim's 

 statement, which Dr. Morley gives, that conhydrine may 

 be broken up into water and coniine, into harmony with 

 Hofmann's formula for coniine. But Hofmann has shown 

 that Wertheim's conhydrine formula is correct, and that 

 it is his experimental fact which is wrong : conhydrine 

 does not yield coniine. In this connection it is strange 

 that Dr. Morley makes no mention of Ladenburg's syn- 

 thetic optically-inactive coniine (a-isopropylpiperidine). 



Under piperidine (p. 434) Konigs's assertion that pyri- 

 dine can be reduced to this compound by treatment with 

 tin and hydrochloric acid is given. Dr. Morley must 

 have overlooked Ladenburg's criticism of this work. 



In the indigo group we find isatin (p. 386) represented 

 as a lactam instead of as a lactim, and the so-called 

 nitroso-oxindol (in reality isotoxim) formulated as a true 



nitroso-compound, instead of as an isonitroso-compound. 

 It is of course conceivable that in these two cases Dr. 

 Morley does not share the views put forward in Baeyer's 

 later work on the indigo-compounds. 



In the foregoing instances the information is, as already 

 stated, merely not up to date. But there are one or two 

 statements in the book, the source of which we are quite 

 unable to trace. Thus we are told (p. 339) that " anthra- 

 quinone forms a compound with bisulphite of soda." If 

 there is one thing that distinguishes anthraquinone from 

 the quinones of the other hydrocarbons with complex 

 nuclei — from phenanthraquinone, chrysoquinone, &c. — it 

 is the fact that it does 7iof form a compound with bisul- 

 phite of soda. 



Again, under the head of ultimate analysis of organic 

 compounds, we read : — 



■' Many mixtures have been suggested from time to 

 time as substitutes for oxide of copper ; the latest is a 

 mixture of potassic chromate and precipitated binoxide 

 of manganese proposed by Dr. Perkin." 



Dr. Perkin would indeed have much to answer for if 

 he had proposed such a substitute for oxide of copper. 

 The mixture was proposed as a substitute for reduced 

 copper, to absorb the oxides of nitrogen formed during 

 the combustion of nitrogenous organic compounds. 



The equation for the action of trichloride of phosphorus 

 on acetic acid (p. 47) is an instance of the strange vitality 

 which symmetrically-constructed and plausible but quite 

 erroneous chemical equations sometimes display. We 

 do not blame Dr. Morley for introducing the equation : it 

 is given in all organic text-books, ancient and modern, 

 from the time of Gerhardt to the present day, and will 

 prob.ibly continue to be employed, translated into the 

 notation of the distant future, at a time when our present 

 formute have become as unintelligible as cuneiform in- 

 scriptions. The correct equation may however be found, 

 by the curious in such matters, in a paper by Dr. Thorpe, 

 {dieni. Soc. Trans., 1880, p. 1S6), who was at the trouble 

 to work out the reaction quantitatively. 



An excellent feature, unusual in an elementary work of 

 this kind, is to be found in the copious references, 

 designed to encourage in students the habit of reading 

 original papers for themselves. F. R. Japp 



THE SPRINGS OF CONDUCT 

 The Springs of Conduct ; an Essay in Evolution. By 



C. Lloyd Morgan. (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, 



and Co., 1885.) 

 "T^HIS is a thoughtful and extremely well-written little 

 book on psychology and ethics, regarded from the 

 standpoint of evolution. There is not much in it that is 

 strikingly original ; but the material is so well arranged, 

 and the views so lucidly expressed, that the work consti- 

 tutes a most interesting epitome of modern thought upon 

 the subjects of which it treats. The author is a man well 

 informed as to his facts, while his ability as an analyst 

 may be remembered by the readers of this journal, in the 

 pages of which it was well displayed a year or two ago in 

 a criticism upon the work of the present writer. On that 

 occasion Mr. Morgan took exception to the study of 

 animal intelligence and mental evolution in animals, on 

 the ground that it is impossible to obtain any verified 



