July 15, 1922] 



NA TURE 



69 



kutu " ear," etc., are locatives which have quite usurped 

 the place of the original noun — usually of Class 5, 

 which accounts for the plural in ma- (maboko. iiuitu) — 

 the locative, as such, having no plural. Similarly, the 

 locative in mu- accounts for the appearance of parts of 

 the body in Class 3. An interesting illustration of this 

 is found in Swahili : the Mombasa dialect has preserved 

 the old word for " foot," gun 5 (for li-galu), pi. magna, 

 which, at Zanzibar, has become m-guu 3 (properly " in 

 the foot "), pi. miguu. 



It is a little difficult to accept in its entirety the 

 following : " Class iS [Meinhof's 20J implies ' hugeness,' 

 something ' gigantic,' ' brutal ' . . . augmentative in 

 an ugly sense. And Class 19 (Ga-) is its plural in 

 Luganda ; otherwise the plural applied to Gu- is usually 

 Mi-." As a matter of fact, the plural mi- really belongs 

 to a distinct augmentative class, with the prefix yi- or 

 gi-\ still surviving in Swahili, though now practically 

 indistinguishable from the 5th. The prefix is still 

 traceable with monosyllabic roots, as m jibwa and jitu 

 — elsewhere (by false analogy) it has been dropped, as 

 in dege, augmentative of ndege. In Mombasa Swahili, 

 the proper plural prefix of these augmentatives is mi-. 

 But these two classes, the Depreciative (" augmentative 

 in an ugly sense ") and the Augmentative proper have 

 become hopelessly confused — as shown by the Masaba 

 example, gumundu, plural gimindu. 



It is difficult to estimate duly the enormous amount 

 of labour which has gone to the making of this volume, 

 and not least to the collating and cross-indexing the 

 word-roots grouped under the English equivalents, 

 after having been enumerated separately under their 

 several languages. With all criticisms that may be 

 possible as to matters of detail (easily corrected if the 

 criticisms are found valid), this work must remain for 

 many years to come the standard guide to the subject. 

 Nothing else that has yet been attempted gives the 

 same comprehensive view of the whole Bantu family, 

 and its possible relationships to the languages adjoining 

 on the north-west. Perhaps the examination of these 

 Semi-Bantu forms of speech is the most valuable part 

 of the whole ; and the discovery of the Homa and 

 Bangminda languages (hitherto unsuspected forms of 

 Bantu) in the Bahr-il-Ghazal may help to throw light 

 on a difficult question. A. Werner. 



Chemistry and Medicine. 

 Preparation des medicaments organiques. Par Ernest 

 Fourneau. Pp. viii + 350. (Paris: J. B. Bailhere 

 et Fils, 192 1). 25 francs. 



ONE of the minor effects of the late war has been 

 the increased production of books on technical 

 chemistry in the allied countries. Dealing with the 

 NO. 2750, VOL. I 10] 



manufacture of organic medicinal substances, hitherto 

 very much a field of German activity, there recently 

 appeared in this country a monograph by Barrowcliff 

 and Carr, primarily concerned with industrial pro- 

 cesses, plant, and patents. Prof. Fourneau, on the other 

 hand, describes in the book under review the prepara- 

 tion of organic medicaments on a laboratory scale. 

 Here are exact directions for all stages of the synthesis 

 of phenacetine, stovaine, veronal, salvarsan, and many 

 others, starting from common materials ; for each step- 

 the yield is given, which in the author's experience can 

 be obtained. A student of organic chemistry who has 

 worked through these will have acquired quite as much 

 manipulative skill as he usually obtains from Cohen's 

 " Practical Organic Chemistry " or Gattermann's 

 " Kochbuch," and he will have made more interesting 

 substances. 



The preparative directions constitute, however, 

 little more than a quarter of the book under notice. 

 Prof. Fourneau begins with a theoretical section, dis- 

 cussing such diverse matters as the relative costs of 

 different processes of large - scale production, the 

 pharmacological methods for testing antipyretics, the 

 considerations which should govern the search for a 

 new local anaesthetic, the chances of finding a useful 

 organic compound of mercury. Like the practical 

 section, the more theoretical one is excellent, and 

 worthy of the discoverer of stovaine, but in a different 

 way. The precision of the experimental part, with 

 its homogeneity and wealth of detail, may recall to 

 some readers that its author is a pupil of Willstatter. 

 The more theoretical portion, less systematic than many 

 German books, is, on the other hand, eminently 

 readable. We feel that Prof. Fourneau has chosen 

 for review just those topics in which he was really 

 interested ; thus we are given admirable accounts of 

 adrenaline analogues, phosphatides and nucleic acids, 

 in excess of their pharmacological importance, and in 

 greater detail than his rapid review of alkaloidal 

 chemistry. 



The advice to beginners on the setting-up of apparatus 

 gives an interesting glimpse of the author's personality. 

 " II faut toujours se preoccuper du montage soigneux 

 et elegant des appareils et y consacrer le temps neces- 

 saire ; on le retrouve toujours." The laboratory 

 should be kept like a drawing-room, and Moissan's 

 ideal is quoted that the chemist should be able to work 

 " sans se salir, en habit, en cravate blanche, en escarpins 

 vernis, sur un parquet cire." 



However, the aesthetics of the laboratory do not 

 extend to the printing-office, for Prof. Fourneau 's 

 book shows a Latin disregard for Teutonic spelling. 

 Aronsohn (p. 22), Warmestich (p. 23), Frankel (pp. 57, 

 229), Fildes (p. 109), Laidlaw (p. 176), Rosenheim, 



C I 



