Febbuaet 21, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



303 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 A History of Chemistry. By Ernst von 

 Meyer, translated by George McGowan. 

 Third Englisli edition. New York, The 

 Macmillan Co. 1906. Pp. xxvii + 691. 



Yortraege iiber die Entwichelungsgeschichte 



der Chemie. By A. Ladenbueg. Fourth 



German edition. Braunschweig, Vieweg 



und Sohn. 1907. Pp. xiv + 418. 



A History of Chemistry. By F. P. Armitage. 

 New York, Longmans, Green and Co. 1906. 

 Pp. XX + 266. 



A History of Chemical Theories and Laws. 

 By M. M. Pattison Mum. New York, John 

 Wiley and Sons. 1907. Pp. xx + 555. 



Ahhandlungen und Yortraege zur Oeschichte 



der Naturwissenschaften. By Edmund O. 



VON LippMANN. Leipzig, Veit und Comp. 



1906. Pp. xii + 590. 



" Man is an animal that looks before and 

 after," but the chemist is, of all men, the one 

 who is most in danger of being so impressed 

 by the activity of to-day as to find little time 

 for looking backward. Yet the greatest chem- 

 ists, almost without exception, have been stu- 

 dents of the history of the science and in many 

 instances their historical reading has influ- 

 enced strongly the direction and even the 

 quality of their work. It is true that the best 

 source of inspiration is the reading of the 

 original documents, but well-ordered general 

 accounts of the development of the science, or 

 of particular parts of it, are indispensable aids 

 in the larger task, even if they can not replace 

 it entirely. The works before us present the 

 historical side of chemistry in different ways, 

 and, far from being competitors, they supple- 

 ment one another admirably. Von Meyer's is 

 the most complete, but the mention of many 

 things in very brief. Ladenburg covers much 

 the same period but takes only the salient 

 points. Armitage is briefer still, more highly 

 colored and more lively. Muir follows only 

 certain lines in the development of the sci- 

 ■ence, but in these lines is fuller than von 

 Meyer. Finally, von Lippmann provides us 

 with a series of intensely interesting studies. 

 He deals with single points or with the work 



of a particular man, and his subjects are as 

 often in physics, or even literature or philol- 

 ogy, as in chemistry. 



The first and second editions of von Meyer's 

 " History " have already been reviewed in Sci- 

 ence, and its breadth and accuracy of treat- 

 ment, the fullness of its references to sources 

 of historical information, and the simplicity 

 and directness of its style are well known to 

 every chemist. Since the appearance of the 

 first German (18§8) and English (1891) edi- 

 tions the science has been advancing with ever- 

 increasing strides and it has been becoming 

 more and more difficult to disentangle from 

 an overwhelming mass of facts the leading 

 ideas of which these facts are in some sense 

 the fruit. The author has endeavored to 

 recognize these advances by means of special 

 histories of each branch of the science, which 

 follow the main history. In these, after a 

 brief resume of the main connections with the 

 earlier history, already discussed in detail, he 

 endeavors to trace the growth down to the date 

 of the present edition. In this he is sur- 

 prisingly successful, when the herculean na- 

 ture of the task is considered. 



The translator has done his work creditably, 

 and the changes he has made, with the sanc- 

 tion of the author, are all useful. It is a pity, 

 however, that these did not include the substi- 

 tution of a reference to A. S. Couper's paper 

 in the Philosophical Magazine, for the two 

 French ones given in the German edition. If 

 so many of our works on chemistry had not 

 been borrowed from Germany, more of us 

 would have escaped errors like that of trying 

 to give a French pronunciation to the name of 

 a Scotsman born in Kirkintulloch ! 



Ladenburg's " Lectures," which have reached 

 their fourth German edition, are familiar in 

 Dobbin's admirable translation. The period 

 which they cover begins, practically, with 

 Lavoisier, and the seventeenth lecture, pre- 

 pared for the fourth edition, brings the book 

 up to date. Evidences of the care with which 

 the other sixteen lectures have been revised 

 may be seen in almost every page. The 

 lectures furnish a clear and interesting pano- 

 rama of the progress of chemistry and hold 



