NOVEMBEK 22, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



811 



especially importaut questions, such as relate 

 to the economy of liquid fuel, the value of the 

 steam-turbine, the form and proportions of pro- 

 pellers, the use of electricity and the value of 

 electric apparatus aud transmissions, the causes 

 and preventions of corrosion of boilers, con- 

 densers and machinery, the best forms of 

 boiler, the balancing of engines, the develop- 

 ment of a storage battery suitable for naval 

 use and the use of compressed air and of gas 

 and oil engines. 



The splendid work of the laboratories of the 

 colleges and technical and professional engineer- 

 ing schools of our own country and, particu- 

 larly, of Germany is referred to as illustrating 

 the promise of this enterprise. 



The Chief of Bureau devotes some space to 

 the subject of the personnel and the organiza- 

 tion of the naval establishment, stating that the 

 ' Personnel bill ' has thus far failed of complete 

 and satisfactory result and asserting that it can 

 only be expected that its purpose will be effected 

 when the oflBcers of the navy of every class 

 cordially unite to carry its provisions into effect 

 completely and efficiently. He quotes Mr. 

 Eoosevelt, who, in the original report upon 

 this plan, asserted ' every officer on a modei-n 

 war vessel has to be a fighting engineer.' 



The union of the engineer corps with the 

 line of the navy, however, has not been a 

 complete success, so far as intended to provide 

 the service with a body of officers equally at 

 home above and below decks and capable of 

 efficiently handling the great ' war-engine ' in 

 its every department and detail. The young 

 officers should be given large and responsible 

 charge of work in the engineering departments 

 and trained as experts ; otherwise that failure 

 which was anticipated by many friends of the 

 navy during the discussion of the bill, as a pos- 

 sibility if not a probability, must be looked for 

 as certain. 



It is stated that for every three officers taken 

 from the engine-room for duty on deck, only 

 one has been transferred from deck to engine- 

 room, and the vitally essential care of motive 

 power is coming thus to be impossible ; unless, 

 indeed, a radical change of method be adopted. 

 The ' engineer's war-engine, ' according to 

 Eoosevelt, must be in the care, each in his 



province, of a crew of officers and men com- 

 petent, individually as well as collectively, to 

 handle its complicated and costly machinery 

 with efficiency and economy. Thus far the new 

 provision of law has not insured even the main- 

 tenance of the former efficiency of the great 

 machine. The condition is critical and the 

 Chief of Bureau shows courage as well as dis- 

 cretion in his discussion of the subject. 



R. H. Thurston. 



Boscoe-Schorlemmer^ s Lehrbuch der organischen 

 Chemie. Von Jul. Wilh. Brtjhl, Professor an 

 der Universitat Heidelberg. Sechster Theil, 

 bearbeitet in Gemeinschaft mit Eduard Hjelt 

 und Ossian Aschan. Braunschweig, Fried- 

 rich Vieweg und Sohn. 1901. Pp. xxxix -f- 

 1045. Price (bound), M. 24. 

 This is the eighth volume of the German 

 edition of Roscoe and Schorlemmer's ' Treatise 

 on Chemistry,' and is the sixth part of the por- 

 tion dealing with oi'ganic chemistry. It in- 

 cludes a consideration of the vegetable alka- 

 loids, glucosides and bitter principles, natural 

 coloring matters, chlorophyll, lichen substances 

 and such indifferent bodies of vegetable origin 

 as have not been considered in previous vol- 

 umes. 



Somewhat more than one half of the volume 

 is given to the alkaloids. The primary classi- 

 fication of these is based on the group charac- 

 teristic of their structure. This gives the pyr- 

 rolidine, pyridine, quinoline and isoquinoline 

 groups and a group containing alkaloids of un- 

 known structure. Within each group they are 

 further classified in accordance with the plant 

 or family of plants from which they are de- 

 rived, this latter classification depending on the 

 well-known fact that alkaloids found in the 

 same plant, and often those found in different 

 plants of the same family, usually have closely 

 related structures. 



About one fourth of the book is given to the 

 glucosides and about eighty pages are given to 

 chlorophyll and the same number to lichen sub- 

 stances. The discussion of chlorophyll is es- 

 pecially full and satisfactory and includes a good 

 bibliography of the subject. In this portion, 

 especially, the needs of the biologist as well as 

 of the chemist have been considered. 



