Notices respecting New Books. 49 



inatic order of study." It was attempted to carry out all these am- 

 bitious intentions in the compass of a single volume ; but the profes- 

 sions of the author were very incompletely realized in the product of 

 his pen. The fourth and last edition of Ure's dictionary appeared 

 during the years 1831 and 1835, and exhibits most of the faults and 

 merits of the first. No further edition was published ; and during 

 the last thirty years English chemical students have been accustomed 

 to consult ill-advised " systems " of chemistry, small (and for the most 

 part spurious) manuals, and Mr. Watts's excellent translation of 

 Gmelin's ' Handbook ' (which, its first volume excepted, is really a 

 dictionary). There was undoubtedly a general desire that a new 

 dictionary should be written, having the same general scope as that 

 of Ure ; and the long and arduous task has been most zealously un- 

 dertaken and ably accomplished by Mr. Watts. His aim has been, 

 we believe, to give to a reader already somewhat versed in the sub- 

 ject a succinct account of modern scientific chemistry and those other 

 sciences which are situated in its immediate vicinity. Applied 

 science constitutes no part of his design, save in its theoretical bear- 

 ings; general theory and laboratory operations receive very full 

 attention ; and the editor consistently avails himself of every mode 

 of exposition. 



While we have deemed it our duty to recall the attention of 

 authors to the formal functions of the three typical modes of scientific 

 publication, and especially with reference to so important a work as 

 the present, we have to regret that we are unable to give so much re- 

 lative space to the discussion of its substance as has been the case 

 with its form. 



Mr. Watts's dictionary suffers little from the circumstance that 

 its publication has extended over a series of five years, and that (as 

 the preface to the fifth volume informs us) its preparation has been 

 the labour of nine. Thus, for example, Dr. Odling's article " Ato- 

 mic Weights," which occurs among the first, and would probably 

 have failed, in less able hands, to indicate the transition period of 

 chemical notation, is an excellent judicial statement of the arguments 

 in favour of the modern principles of chemistry ; and while these are 

 illustrated with great firmness and perspicuity, the reader is very 

 properly left to decide for himself on several points which had been 

 raised. Neither, again, is it of very material importance that the 

 symbolic values proposed by Gerhardt and Cannizaro have been suc- 

 cessively employed in these pages ; and care is taken to prevent any 

 mistake on the part of the student by making at the outset a distinc- 

 tion in the symbol itself. If we add to this that the nomenclature 

 keeps pace with the notation, and is nowhere allowed to be obscure 

 or doubtful, we have said enough to convince those for whom these 

 volumes are intended of the editor's caution with respect to minor 

 but significant particulars. 



One of the most striking features in this dictionary is the atten- 

 tion which has been paid to chemical theory. Not only is this evi- 

 dent in the article to which we have but recently alluded, but in 

 Professor G. C. Foster's treatment of Classification, Acid, Alkali and 



Phil. Mag. S. 4. Vol. 36. No. 240. July 1868. E 



