94 



NATURE 



[November 26, 1908 



of observed and verified fact as the chief duty of the 

 editor of a work such as Quain, but however much 

 one may applaud his aim it cannot be said that his 

 style is a happy one for descriptive purposes. The 

 following- instance may be selected from p. 251, and 

 it is by no means an isolated example : — 



" The formation of the vertebral body is brouj^ht 

 about as follows : the notochordal sheath becomes 

 prolonged dorso-ventrally into a kind of septum, which 

 extends between the primitive plates and separates 

 the loose mesenchyme, alluded to above, into a right 

 and left moiety ; at the same time the superficial layers 

 of the intervening tissue become condensed into a 

 continuous lamella uniting the plates and enclosing 

 the looser tissue on each side of the septum. This 

 enclosed tissue now becomes converted into cartilage. 

 There are necessarily at first two chondrogenetic 

 centres, but soon the septum becomes implicated, and 

 the notochord is enclosed in a continuous cartilaginous 

 ring." 



Now the body of a vertebra is a very simple thing, 

 but the reviewer, after reading and re-reading Dr. 

 Bryce's description, has been unable to obtain a 

 mental picture of how it is formed, and most students 

 will find the same difficulty. The first essential of 

 a descriptive text is that it must be clear and simple, 

 and very frequently Dr. Bryce's text has neither of 

 these merits. As regards the interpretation of fact 

 and statement of theory, the editor has rightly assumed 

 an impersonal and non-committal attitude; he leaves 

 the reader free to make his own choice. He has given 

 an impartial representation of the work and theories 

 of most embryologists, with one exception ; in describ- 

 ing the origin of primitive sex cells, not a word is 

 mentioned of the arduous and pioneer work of Dr. 

 Beard, of Edinburgh. 



\ large number of new illustrations have been 

 added, many of those by Dr. Br3ce, such as Fig. 136, 

 showing a stage in the development of the nerve roots, 

 being of real merit, but on the other hand it must 

 be admitted that the illustrations prepared from photo- 

 graphs of sections of the embryo and foetus are almost 

 of no value whatsoever, for it is only the expert who 

 can make any use of such sections, and these they 

 have already by the score in their store cupboards. 

 In exercising the riglits of a reviewer, perhaps the 

 many merits of this new edition have been sacrificed 

 to an enumeration of what the reviewer regards as 

 demerits, and it is only just to Dr. Bryce to mention 

 in conclusion that the former far outweigh the latter. 



In part i. of vol. iii. Profs. Schiifer and Symington 

 have produced a standard work on the structure of 

 the central nervous system. The combination of 

 physiologist and anatomist has had the happiest result, 

 securing at once an authoritative representation of 

 what is known of the finer structure as well as the 

 gross anatomy of the brain and spinal cord. The 

 volume is richly and wisely illustrated, many of the 

 new figures by Prof. Symington being of great merit. 

 One has only to compare it with the corresponding 

 volume of the last edition to realise the extraordinary 

 progress that has been made during the last fifteen 

 years in every part of our knowledge of the brain. 



A. K. 

 NO. 2039, VOL. 79] 



NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC CAMPHOR. 

 La Canfora Italiana. By Prof. Italo Giglioli. 

 Pp. 292. (Rome: Tipografia Nazionale di Gio- 

 vanni Bertero e. C, igo8.) 

 T^HE commercial production of camphor is, at the 

 present time, in a very interesting phase. The 

 true camphor tree, Cinnaniomum camphora, one of 

 the Lauracese, occurs wild in eastern Asia, Formosa 

 and Japan yielding the greater portion of the world's 

 supply. After the Chino-Japanese AVar, the Japanese, 

 by the acquisition of Formosa, gained the practical 

 control of the total output, and camphor production 

 was made a Government monopoly, first in Formosa, 

 but afterwards in Japan as well. Within a short 

 space of time camphor rose enormously in price, 

 causing serious concern in the industries employing 

 camphor, particularly the manufacture of celluloid, 

 which uses up the greater portion of the world's 

 supply. 



This condition of affairs, and the possibility, as a 

 further development, that celluloid manufacture might 

 also become a Japanese monopoly, gave a great im- 

 petus to research with the object of preparing camphor 

 artificially or of finding some efficient substitute. 

 The chemists proved equal to the occasion, and 

 camphor was prepared syntheticall)' by using turpen- 

 tine oil as a raw material, the successive products in 

 one of the processes being the terpene pinene, pinene- 

 hydrochloride, camphene, bornyl acetate, borneol, and 

 finally crude camphor, which, when refined, yields 

 camphor identical in all its properties with the natural 

 product except that it is optically inactive, a differ- 

 ence, however, of no economic importance. 



Not only has the synthesis of camphor been suc- 

 cessfuUv accomplished, but the synthetic camphor can 

 be prepared at a sufficiently low price to enable it 

 to be a formidable competitor to the natural pro- 

 duct, and it is at present a moot point as to whether 

 the natural or artificial camphor can be produced tlie 

 more cheaply. Natural camphor in the past was ob- 

 tained by the destructive method of felling mature 

 trees, cutting up the wood into chips, and subjecting 

 these to distillation. The experiments carried out 

 during recent years at the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 Ceylon, and elsewhere have shown that this is not 

 essential, and that camphor can be obtained from 

 the young twigs and shoots, and it is possible that by 

 coppicing the plant instead of allowing it to assume 

 its normal tree habit much greater yields can be 

 obtained per acre, and the cost of production con- 

 siderably reduced. Synthetic camphor, on the other 

 liand, unless other large supplies of suitable hydro- 

 carbons become av'ailable, will remain dependent on 

 turpentine oil, which during recent years has shown 

 a tendency to increase in price. 



The Japanese monopoly not only encouraged re- 

 searches aiming at the artificial production of cam- 

 phor, but also gave a stimulus to the cultivation of 

 the tree in other countries, the work in Ceylon already 

 referred to being a case in point. Prof. Giglioli, in 

 the volume under review, deals with this aspect of 

 the question as regards Italy. Many people, asso- 



