June 2 i, 1906] 



NA TURE 



173 



CONVERSATIONS ON CHEMISTRY. 



I tiversatioiis on Chemistry. First Stel>s in 

 CJicwistry. Part ii., Cheniislry of the Most 

 Important Elcmints and Compounds. By \V. Ost- 

 wakl. Authorised translation by Stuart K. Turn- 

 bull. Pp. viii + -573. (New York: John Wiley and 

 .Sons; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1906.) 

 Price Si. 61/. net. 



THE original German edition of this book has been 

 already noticed in Natukk (March 9, 1905, vol. Ix.xi., 

 p. 435). The translation into English will make it 

 accessible to a wider range of teachers, and to thcni 

 it is to be warmly commended. No one can fail to 

 be interested in seeing how one of the most lucid of 

 German expositors, and one of the most ardent of 

 reformers, presents the material of ordinary inor- 

 ganic chemistry to the elementary student, and 

 there are probably few people engaged in the business 

 of teaching chemistry who will not find Prof. 

 Ostwald's book of chemical dialogue eminently in- 

 teresting and suggestive. 



.'V book by so trenchant a critic naturally invites a 

 close scrutiny, and particular interest will be felt in the 

 treatment of certain points of difliculty which in a 

 peculiar way beset the teaching of elementary chem- 

 istry. We may cite, for example, the definition or 

 characterisation of an acid. Prof. Ostwald meets the 

 case in a very simple way. On p. 16 it is written, 

 " Only those compounds are acids which give off 

 hvdrogen with magnesium," and this is re-affirmed 

 as quite correct on p. 17. We appreciate the ad- 

 \antage of a touchstone, but it may fairly be asked if, 

 in the first place, magnesium is such a touchstone, and, 

 secondly, whether this is the right kind of basis for the 

 characterisation of an acid. In regard to the first point 

 we think there is doubt, for although it is explicitly 

 stated that water gives off no hydrogen with magne- 

 siuin, and is not an acid, it is admitted later on p. 247 

 that " the metal has only a very slight effect on water," 

 and, of course, it might be urged that at higher 

 temperatures magnesium will actually burn in steam 

 and liberate hydrogen in torrents. We think that 

 Prof. Ostwald's pupil, who in this book is invested 

 with a degree of zeal and adroitness calculated to 

 make other teachers envious, might have been allowed 

 to persecute his master a little more on the subject, 

 until he had elicited the confession that on this ques- 

 tion of acids, as on so many others relating to 

 chemistry, the relativity and transition of things 

 .iltogether preclude absolute definitions. 



It is, perhaps, almost captious to make these re- 

 marks, for the way in which the teacher is exhibited 

 in this book as anxious to be questioned is truly 

 admirable, and most points are worked out with 

 great ingenuity and address to an entirely logical 

 conclusion. The allusion to things and phenomena 

 of real human interest and the suppression of 

 pedantry are also to be warmly commended. 



The actual work of translation has, on the whole, 



been well done. The nationality of the translator is 



betrayed by occasional troubles with shall and will, 



and there are some positive mistakes in sense. Thus, 



NO. 191 2, VOL. 74] 



" Leimwasscr in Fdulnis iibergegangen " is rendered 

 " lime-water which has become foul," and on p. 4i( 

 the first two lines contain a mistranslation which 

 makes a serious error both in fact and theory. . 



In conclusion, we may perhaps be permitted to 

 regret that so useful a book has not been issued at 

 a price which would make its wide dissemination 

 among teachers more certain. .\. S. 



NENCKI'S COLLECTED WORKS. 



Marccli Nencki Omnia Opera. Gesammelte Arbeiten 

 von Prof. M. Nencki. Two vols. Erster Band. 

 Pp. xlii-l-840. Zweiter Band. Pp. xiii4-893. 

 (Brunswick : F. \'ieweg and Son, 1905.) Price 

 45 marks. 



THE death of Prof. .M. Nencki at the comparatively 

 early age of fifty-four was a great blow to 

 science. He attained a world-wide reputation as an 

 investigator of the first order, and his laboratory at 

 St. Petersburg became a busy hive of earnest workers, 

 all fired with the enthusiasm and thoroughness of 

 their master. The most fitting monument for such 

 a man is the collection of his works presented to us 

 in the two volumes which form the subject of this 

 review. The labour of love in preparing this book 

 for the press has fallen upon two of his most attached 

 colleagues, namely, Nadine Sieber and Prof. J. 

 Zaleski, and they have chosen the German language 

 as that in which to publish his collected memoirs. 

 They have written an account of his life in the 

 introductory pages, but have wisely chosen to make 

 this brief ; his work was his real life, and this is 

 allowed to speak for itself. 



Nencki's name is best known, perhaps, for his 

 researches that deal with the decomposition products 

 of albumin, with the history of urea and its pre- 

 cursors in the body, and with the chemistry of haemo- 

 globin and other pigments. Probablv few had any 

 idea how varied were the investigations he under- 

 took in other branches of biological chemistry, and 

 how enormous was the output from his laboratory. 

 The total number of papers now published amounts 

 to three hundred and forty-si.x. They were issued 

 from the year 1869 onwards, and include not only 

 those written by Nencki himself, or in conjunction 

 with his colleagues, but also those published by the 

 workers in his laboratory. 



It is interesting to note how with the advance in 

 knowledge the subjects treated vary with the march 

 of the years. An organic chemist at heart, Nencki 

 best loved a research in which he could apply his 

 chemical learning to obtain exact results. But he 

 never lost sight of the application of chemical know- 

 ledge to the problems of medicine, pathology, and 

 pharmacology, even although in many cases the re- 

 sults lacked that certainty and neatness which 

 form the chemist's aim. As bacteriology, the giant 

 daughter of physiology, became a specialised branch 

 of study, we see how the resources of his laboratory 

 were given over to the elucidation of its chemical 

 relationships; and in more recent years the new 



