26 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 757 



able of judging sanely neither about the 

 amount of pain involved nor the importance 

 of the knowledge to be obtained. Says Presi- 

 dent Eliot of Harvard University: 



The humanity which would prevent human suf- 

 fering is a deeper and truer humanity than the 

 humanity which would save pain or death to 

 animals. 



Moreover, the experiments give knowledge 

 which saves pain not only to millions of hu- 

 man beings, but in many cases to animals 

 themselves. In tuberculosis, for instance, the 

 men of science are fighting for cattle as well 

 as for men ; in lockjaw, for horses as well as 

 for our own kind. The marvelous results in 

 diphtheria have happily now become known to 

 almost every mother. To stop animal experi- 

 mentation would check the advance of surg- 

 ery. It would take away our strongest weapon 

 in the promising fight being waged against 

 cerebro-spinal meningitis, bubonic plague, 

 dysentery and malaria. It would reduce us 

 to despair in the harder but still hopeful con- 

 test with canoer.— Collier's WeeMy. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Manufacture of Explosives — Twenty 



Years' Progress. By Oscae Guttmann. 



8vo, 84 pp., 11 illustrations. New York, 



The Macmillan Company. 1909. Price 



$1.10 net. 



The major title of this book is identical 

 with that of the well-known two-volume work 

 by the same author which was published in 

 1895. The make-up of the new volume is 

 similar to that of the older ones and it may 

 properly be regarded as a supplement to them. 

 The significance of the subtitle is not appar- 

 ent on a close reading of the text, for the first 

 installment begins with an historical resume 

 from 1250 to 1886, and this same method of 

 treatment obtains throughout the book as new 

 topics are introduced. Even taking 1886 as 

 the point of departure, this date precedes the 

 publication of the first volumes by nine years, 

 so that there is necessarily some repetition in 

 the supplement, but much of it is avoided by 

 referring to the descriptions published in the 

 earlier volumes. Nevertheless, this feature 

 should be borne in mind when citing this au- 



thor in litigation or for historical precedence 

 and the statements of the supplement should 

 be carefully compared with those of the major 

 parts. 



This condition has arisen from the fact that 

 the present volume is a record of four Cantor 

 lectures delivered before the Royal Society of 

 Arts in 1908 and that such historical resumes 

 were deemed necessary to properly introduce 

 the topics. Lecture I. deals with black powder 

 and other nitrate mixtures, chlorate mixtures, 

 " metallic " explosives, picric acid, picrates 

 and trinitrotoluol; lecture II. with nitro- 

 glycerine, dynamites, guncotton and nitro- 

 starch; lecture III. with smokeless and flame- 

 less powders, fulminates, detonators and fuses, 

 safety explosives and their use, particularly in 

 mines; lecture IV. with the use of nitrocellu- 

 lose in other industries, the construction, light- 

 ing and inspection of factories, accidents and 

 precautions to be taken, the merits and de- 

 merits of explosives, stability of explosives and 

 stabilizing agents, and finishes with a prophecy 

 regarding the powder of the future. 



The author holds a very poor opinion of 

 nitrocellulose as a material from which to 

 make smokeless powder, though all smokeless 

 powders now adopted for military and naval 

 use are composed of nitrocellulose alone or 

 mixed with nitroglycerine, and he predicts 

 that a stable nitro-compound of the aromatic 

 series alone, or in conjunction with nitro- 

 glycerine, will come into use so soon as some 

 government finds the courage to make the 

 change. He likewise regards picric acid, 

 which has been adopted by almost every coun- 

 try as a disruptive agent, under names such 

 as melinite, lyddite, shimose powder, ecrasit 

 and others, as a treacherous substance and 

 expresses the hope that we shall some day give 

 up its use. 



Considering the use of explosives in mines, 

 he points out the difficulty of determining 

 what makes an explosive safe in fire damp. 

 Thus since mercuric fulminate ordinarily does 

 not ignite fire damp, while black powder does 

 the Prussian Commission state that the more 

 rapid the explosion the safer the explosive, 

 yet certain black powder mixtures like bob- 



