456 
NATURE 
[APRIL 7, 1923, 

from much the same area of origin around the middle 
Danube, into Western Europe and Britain, and of 
similar waves of “ P-using” and “ Q-using ” immi- 
grants into peninsular Italy, and probably also into 
Greece ; though Mr. Peake is discreetly reserved in 
his treatment of these last. 
Much of Mr. Peake’s material is, of course, familiar ; 
it is his courageous attempt to compare disparate 
series, and draw historical conclusions, which justifies 
his book; and it will be found full of suggestive 
passages, even by those who will best appreciate the 
difficulties of his task and the defects of his equipment 
for it. It is eminently a book to be judged by its 
merits, not by its faults. It has omissions, but its 
main argument is clear and generally coherent; it 
has slips and some misapprehensions in detail, but 
they do not seriously detract from its cogency. Its 
central contribution to learning, the establishment 
of a morphological sequence among the “ leaf-shaped 
swords” by comparative study, not of their blades 
but of their hilts, is of considerable importance. This 
is a kind of work of which much more remains to be 
done: a similar essay on the fibula alone would prob- 
ably lead to appreciable revision of the conclusions of 
Montelius and his contemporaries a generation ago, 
and would be the only conclusive test of the validity 
of Mr. Peake’s inferences. It must also be noted here 
that even what has been attempted in this essay is 
but the first-fruits of the great inventory of the types 
of prehistoric implements, so long overdue, of which 
only the British section of the bronze implements has 
been systematically attempted as yet, by Mr. Peake 
himself and a British Association committee. Till 
such an inventory has been very greatly extended, 
and the distributions which it alone can reveal have 
been plotted and compared, prehistoric archeology 
can scarcely be said to have entered upon a truly scien- 
tific phase. It is one of the merits of any piece of work 
such as this essay, that it illustrates by example, 
even if also in some degree by anticipation, the value 
of such an addition to archeological equipment as 
the British Association’s inventory is already proving 
itself to be. 

Gelatin and Glue. 
The Chemistry and Technology of Gelatin and Glue. By 
Dr. R. H. Bogue. (Mellon Institute Technochemical 
Series.) Pp. xi+644. (New York and London: 
McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1922.) os. 
NYONE who, in recent years, has had occasion to 
deal with the question of gelatin has been con- 
fronted at the outset with the fact that no adequate 
NO. 2788, VoL. 111] 


summary of the existing knowledge was available. 
An immense amount of information was widely 
scattered in the various scientific and technical journals 
of all countries, but it was so varied in character, and 
very often so contradictory, that the task of making 
a summary which was something other than a mass 
of apparently disconnected facts seemed almost hope- 
less. The pioneering work of Procter in England, 
which dealt chiefly with gelatin, and of Pauli in Austria, 
which was concerned with proteins in general, gave the 
first indication of the basis on which such a summary ~ 
could be made; but the more recent work of Loeb in 
America has perhaps helped more than anything else 
towards a clarification of ideas. The work of Brails- 
ford Robertson should also be mentioned, since he 
has collected a large amount of experimental data, 
although his theoretical conclusions are accepted 
by few. 
The clarification of ideas has been chiefly confined 
to the physico-chemical treatment of the subject. 
The more purely chemical aspect of the question has 
not advanced much beyond the identification of the 
break-down products of gelatin, and the more or less 
satisfactory methods of estimating the percentages of 
the various kinds of combined nitrogen. 
During the last few years American scientific jou 
especially have obtained a large number of papers on 
gelatin, which have been published by workers other 
than Loeb. Among the chief of these workers has 
been Dr. Bogue, and it is therefore not to be wondered 
at that, of three books on gelatin which have been 
announced in the American press for some time past, 
his is the first to be published. Dr. Bogue is research 
chemist for Armour and Company of Chicago—would 
that English gelatin firms were as wide awake in this 
respect as the American ones !—and is consequently 
in touch with the technological as well as with the more 
purely theoretical side of the subject. His book has 
therefore been awaited with interest by those who 
have to deal with gelatin, and they will not be dis- 
appointed, since the author has been eminently suc- 
cessful in correlating and summarising the enormous 
amount of material at his disposal, and in giving a 
clear and readable account of the subject. After an 
introduction dealing with historical and statistical 
considerations, the theoretical aspects of the subject 
are considered. These include the constitution of 
the proteins, the chemistry of gelatin and its con- 
geners, the physico-chemical properties and structure 
of gelatin, gelatin as a lyophile and as an amphoteric 
colloid. 
The author seems to have contented himself with 
giving only such literature references as are necessary 
for drawing up a connected account of the subject. 
