746 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. i 



paragraph whicii closes with the following 

 sentence : " There are decided objections to 

 complication in any form of apparatus which 

 may receive rough treatment in transportation 

 and which is frequently handled carelessly by 

 its operators." It is surprising to note that 

 the author gives preference to a form of appa- 

 ratus because it is able to withstand " rough 

 treatment " and " careless handling," when it 

 has repeatedly been shown that the apparatus 

 gives erroneous results. 



The chapter on exact gas analysis contains a 

 description of two burettes designed by the 

 author. The bulbed gas burette is an improve- 

 ment over the Pettersson-Hempel gas burette 

 for exact gas analysis with respect to the accu- 

 racy with which gas volumes may be read. 



Under the methods for the determination 

 of the heating value of a gas, the Junkers 

 calorimeter is taken up in detail, brief men- 

 tion is made of the Hempel, Graefe, Parr, and 

 Doherty calorimeters, and one paragraph is 

 devoted to the discussion of automatic and 

 recording gas calorimeters. The material in 

 this chapter is excellent. The use of the defi- 

 nition of what is known usually as " total " 

 heating value to define the " gross " heating 

 value is confusing, especially since later in 

 the chapter there is given a table of correc- 

 tions to obtain the " total " heating value from 

 the observed or " gross " heating value. This 

 chapter also includes a description of the sling 

 psychrometer for determining moisture in air, 

 since the moisture content is one of the vari- 

 ables upon which the value of the above correc- 

 tion depends. The whirling psychrometer is 

 not mentioned. 



There is a short chapter on the determina- 

 tion of suspended particles in gas, a subject 

 which has hitherto not been given the promi- 

 nence it deserves in books of this character. 

 In the words of the author, this is a subject 

 which " is daily becoming of greater impor- 

 tance on account of legal restrictions on pollu- 

 tion of the air and on account of insistence on 

 closer control of industrial operations by 

 manufacturers." 



The remainder of the twelve chapters on gas 

 analysis is devoted to a discussion of chimney 



gas, producer gas, illuminating gas and natu- 

 ral gas, including methods of analysis and the 

 application and interpretation of the results. 



The chapter on liquid fuels is short and not 

 so comprehensive as one would expect from 

 the title of the book. 



Under coal analysis, there is one chapter on 

 sampling, one on the chemical analysis and 

 two on the determination of the heating value 

 by various methods. Frequent references are 

 made in these chapters to the results of the 

 investigations of the Joint Committee on Coal 

 Analysis of the American Chemical Society 

 and the Society for Testing Materials, of the 

 Bureau of Mines and of the Bureau of 

 Standards. 



Typographical errors occur occasionally, 

 e. g., Ernshaw for Eamshaw, page 81, naptha- 

 lene for naphthalene, pages 164 and 169, and 

 Kjehldahl for Kjeldahl, page 210; there is a 

 lack of punctuation, especially of commas, 

 which renders some of the sentences ambiguous ; 

 peculiar constructions are present, e. g., 

 " Chapter II. describes the apparatus which 

 the author believes best adapted to technical 

 gas analysis and gives detailed directions for 

 its manipulation," page 61, and " These gases 

 (sulphur dioxide and sulphur trioxide) are 

 absorbed, oxidized to sulphuric acid and 

 weighed as barium sulphate," page 162; and 

 finally, " estimation " is used throughout the 

 book in place of " determination." 



The book is well illustrated; all determina- 

 tions that involve computations are clearly 

 explained by the aid of concrete examples; 

 and eight useful tables are appended at the 

 close. 



E. P. Anderso^j 



Cornell UNrvERsiTT, 

 Department of Chemistry, 

 October 24, 1913 



PEOFESSOB NOGVCHI'S SESEAECEES ON 

 INFECTIVE DISEASES^ 



The Eoyal Society of Medicine mostly 

 limits the record of its work to its own Pro- 

 ceedings and the medical journals; and it 

 does well to observe this wise rule. But from 



1 From Nature. 



