562 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1033 



are themselves well wortli the price of the vol- 

 ume. Cassius J. Keyser 



A Dictionary of Applied Chemistry. By Sir 

 Edward Thorpe. Longmans, Green & 

 Company. 5 vols., 800 pp. each. Price 

 $13.50. 



Samuel Johnson, to use his words, " noting 

 whatever might be of use to ascertain or illus- 

 trate any word or phrase, accumulated in time 

 the materials of a dictionary." A proper 

 dictionary of chemistry might then well be a 

 collection of whatever information might be 

 of use in ascertaining and illustrating words 

 and phrases of chemical usage. Some such 

 broad foundation was used in the dictionary 

 at hand. 



Thorpe's " Dictionary of Applied Chemis- 

 try," first published in 1890, has ever since been 

 such a well-known dictionary that a review of 

 this new and enlarged edition need concern 

 only the completeness of the accumulations 

 since then. It is clear that no other English 

 work contains so much information of chem- 

 ical nature. As it also gives the main refer- 

 ences to literature on many subjects, it is 

 difficult to conceive of any improvement which 

 the chemist might fairly expect. There are 

 now five volumes, as against three in 1898. 

 Emerson's reference to dictionaries, in his 

 essay on Books, is particularly fitting when 

 shorn of any points of irony : " Neither is a 

 dictionary a bad book to read. There is no 

 cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is 

 full of suggestions — the raw material of pos- 

 sible poems and histories." This has all seemed 

 very pertinent to me in reading the " illustra- 

 tions " of some of the chemical words. " Ab- 

 sorption spectra and chemical composition" 

 has charm and rhythm that must be poetry 

 to every real chemist. The brief accounts of 

 such perennially youthfiil patriarchs as iron, 

 tungsten, boron, etc., are free from " cant " 

 and " excess," and are powerful new history. 

 The Frash process, by which practically all 

 the sulphur in the United States is now pro- 

 duced, is a very interesting story and partic- 

 ularly to those who know only of the Sicilian 

 sulphur of the older books. 



Hardly a single chemical element has been 



" dead " since the publication of the first edi- 

 tion of this Dictionary, and therefore they all 

 had their history rewritten. Then almost no 

 hydrogen was technically applied, no oxygen 

 manufactured, no aluminum sold. Silicon, 

 tantalum, argon and radium were all prac- 

 tically unheard of. 



A great deal had to be written to " illus- 

 trate " the words of modern applied chemistry, 

 novelties of the recent period: cryoscopy, cya- 

 namid, monel metal, metallography, etc. This 

 has been well done, and usually by experts. 

 Who, for example, could better describe carbon 

 bisulphide than our own E. E. Taylor, who 

 makes about all that is used in America ? The 

 oils, fats, waxes, etc., have been cared for by 

 Lewkowitsch, water by Frankland, potash by 

 Lunge, radioactivity by Bragg, cellulose by 

 Cross, and paper by Bevan, dyes by Perkin, 

 and acetylene by Lewes. Thus scores of the 

 most prominent chemists of all nations have 

 aided the work. 



A few more of the indicators used to deter- 

 mine that the work has been brought up to 

 date may well be mentioned. The ancient and 

 interesting " sufFoni " are now partly displaced 

 by California mines of colemanite as a source 

 of boric acid. Cement is now burned in rotat- 

 ing kilns of 150 feet length. Oxyhydrogen and 

 oxyacetylene metal cutting are well described. 

 Chemical affinity, equilibria and catalysis are 

 living subjects evidently still being studied at 

 the time of going to press, and they are made 

 comprehensive by articles of breadth. Bordet's 

 and Ehrlich's different views of the interaction 

 of toxins and antitoxins are disclosed. The 

 Claude and the Linde air liquefaction proc- 

 esses and the liquefaction work on hydrogen 

 and helium by Travers and Olszewski are fully 

 described. Four different uses of the word 

 ferrite are described, which ought to militate 

 a little against the use of this word for any 

 other newly discovered material. 



Chemical analysis is treated in 100 pages as 

 compared with 57 of the 1898 edition: Azo 

 colors in 38 pages, as against 28 ; carbohydrates, 

 24 as against 4; naphthalene, 102, in place of 

 65; ozone 8 against 2i; rust and corrosion of 

 iron 11 against 2J; spectrum analysis 30 



