34 



NA TURE 



[November ii, 1909 



(4) Councillor Gustav Miiller's essay on chemical 

 industry contains a wealth of information hitherto 

 scattered in official publications and technical journals, 

 and only to be gleaned with difficulty. There is little 

 doubt that it will become an indispensable book of 

 reference to the chemical merchant and manufacturer, 

 as well as a guide to the works manager, on all 

 economical and statistical questions concerning his in- 

 dustry. The early chapter on general economic de- 

 velopment contains a brief history of the growth 

 of chemical industry in different countries, with full 

 statistics for all the different branches dealt with. 

 Valuable information is collected with regard to patents 

 and trade marks, and the existing " trusts " or 

 "Kartels." A chapter covering eighty pages, on the 

 legal control of the industry, includes a discussion of 

 patent laws, factory acts, workmen's insurance and 

 health regulations, and includes details of the tarifT 

 rates for Germany and of trading treaties with other 

 countries. In the second part of the work, a chapter 

 is devoted to each individual branch of chemical in- 

 dustry, and here complete statistics of imports and 

 exports for several years past are collected for each 

 substance considered. The whole work is excellently 

 arranged, and cannot but prove of the very highest 

 utility. 



(5) Mr. Harold Baron's report is the outcome of a 

 tour undertaken in 1905 as Gartside scholar in the 

 University of Manchester. Under the tenure of these 

 scholarships, each scholar has to select some industry 

 or part of an industry for examination, and inves- 

 tigate this comparatively in the United Kingdom and 

 abroad. The present report is an account of a visit to 

 a large number of chemical and textile works in 

 Belgium, northern France, and Germany, with com- 

 ments on their character and organisation. The re- 

 port makes interesting reading, and contains a good 

 deal of information likely to prove instructive to those 

 not well acquainted with Continental chemical works 

 and their methods. The description given of the won- 

 derful works of the Bayer Company at Elberfeld and 

 Leverkusen deserves to be widely read. .\t Lever- 

 kusen the works are equipped with a water supply 

 capable of producing thirteen and a quarter million 

 gallons per day, the daily consumption of Cologne, 

 a town with 400,000 inhabitants, being only thirteen 

 million gallons daily. Some idea of the vastness of 

 the colour works may be derived from the fact that 

 the azo-colour department alone necessitates the use 

 of 78,000 tons of ice per annum for cooling purposes. 

 Mr. Baron's report is, on the whole, a just and 

 accurate statement, but a few errors occur which need 

 correction. For example, some of the statements with 

 regard to the processes of manufacturing artificial silk 

 need revision. Such errors were, perhaps, to be ex- 

 pected in a report prepared under the conditions of 

 the present and dealing with a very wide field. 



(6) Dr. Rogers's book and system we conceive to be 

 based on entirely wrong principles. His scheme of 

 training in industrial chemistry adopted at the Piatt 

 Institute, Brooklyn, consists in passing the students 

 (the nature of whose chemical knowledge is rather 

 uncertain) through a course of preparations and 



NO. 2089, VOL. 82] 



exercises under works-conditions in miniature. No 

 attention is paid, apparently, to fundamental principles 

 and process control. In less than 140 pages ar» 

 enormous number of cookery-book recipes are given 

 for the preparation of inorganic and organic com- 

 pounds, pigments and lakes, driers, varnishes, paints 

 and stains, soap and allied products, leather, wood 

 pulp, and paper. The preparations are carried out 

 with small works-plant, of which several illustra- 

 tions are given in the book. We doubt the value of 

 such a course in the education of a works-chemist, 

 and consider that it would probably be to the detri- 

 ment of the interests of his subsequent employers 

 as tending to develop a blind and thoughtless em- 

 piricism. One of the most important factors in the 

 success of a chemical works is a proper system ot 

 control, on scientific principles, of all stages of manu- 

 facture. We consider that it would be far better to 

 work out a few — very few — manufacturing processes 

 in detail, carefully studying by a proper system of tests 

 the effects of varying the conditions, than to acquire 

 a smattering of a large number of indiscriminately 

 chosen works-operations. It is only by means of 

 careful scientific control that chemical works in this 

 country can hope to compete with foreign competition. 

 To teach industrial chemistry as a series of cookery 

 operations, involving the use of certain stock utensils, 

 is likely to prove fatal in all cases, except in countries 

 such as the United States, where high tariffs make 

 cconomv of production a secondary consideration. 



VV. \ D. 



HANDBOOKS ON ANIMAL STUDY. 



(i) Zoologia. By Angel Gallardo. Pp. 474. (Buenos 



.Aires : .Angel Estrada Cia., 1909.) Price 6 dollars. 



(2) Einjilhrung in die Biologic. By Prof. Karl 

 Kraepelin. Pp. viii + 322. (Leipzig and Berlin : 

 B. G. Teubner, 1909.) Price 4 marks. 



(3) The Freshwater Aquarium and its Inhabitants. 

 By Otto Eggeling and Frederick Ehrenberg. Pp. 

 vii + 352. (New York: Henry Holt and Co.; 

 London : G. Bell and Sons.) Price Ss. net. 



(4) Bildcr aus dent Anivit^cidebcn. By H. Viehmeyer. 

 Pp. viii + 159. (Leipzig: Quelle und Mever, n.d.) 

 Price 1.80 marks. 



(5) Die Schwarotser der Menschen und Ticre. By 

 Dr. O. von Linstow. Pp. viii+144. (Leipzig: 

 Quelle und Meyer, n.d.) Price 1.80 marks. 



(1) TT seems almost axiomatic that if a text-book 

 J- of zoology begins by dealing with the obscure 

 details and overwhelming nomenclature of cytology, it 

 is a bad book. Bad because organisms are not aggre- 

 gates of cells, and because such a method is essentially 

 an inverted one in relation to the grasp of the be- 

 ginner. In this text-book, written for the School of 

 Pharmacy at Buenos Aires, the inversion appears 

 complete. The end of the book is an introduction 

 showing how zoology has been pursued in the republic, 

 whilst the beginning is occupied by Karyokinesis, 

 modes of segmentation, and other difficult subjects. 

 After general histology, we have evolution and trans- 

 formation-theories treated in that diagrammatic and 



